No abstract available.
Brain* ; Child* ; Humans ; Nervous System Diseases*

BACKGROUND: Plastic tubes have recently been used for blood collection tubes in clinical laboratories. The silicone coated plastic tube is said to be very similar with the glass tube and to show no difference with the glass tube in routine blood test except for some tests such as hormone tests and drug monitoring. So, we investigated the influence of plastic tube on the thyroid hormone test using two types of plastic vacuum tubes. METHODS: A total of 105 cases for the total triiodothyronine (T3), total thyroxine (T4), and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) were studied. The glass tube was a plain glass tube, and the plastic tube was a serum separator tube with gel. The plastic vacuum tubes used in this study were the SST II plus tube (Becton Dickinson, Franklin Lakes, USA) and the Vacuette tube (Greiner Bio-One, Kremsmunster, Austria). An IMMULITE 2000 analyzer (Diagnostic Products Corporation, Los Angeles, USA) was used to measure the total T3, total T4 and TSH. RESULTS: Comparisons of the measured values within 1 hour of blood collection in the plastic tube with that in the glass tube are as follows. There was no difference between the Vacuette tube and the glass tube for the three tests, while there was statistically significant difference between the SST II plus tube and the glass tube for the total T3 and total T4. CONCLUSIONS: It might need more cautious interpretation of the results by a solid-phase, competitive chemiluminescent enzyme immunoassay, when the plastic vacuum tube is used as a blood collection tube instead of the glass tube.
Drug Monitoring ; Glass* ; Hematologic Tests ; Immunoenzyme Techniques ; Lakes ; Plastics* ; Silicones ; Thyroid Gland* ; Thyrotropin ; Thyroxine ; Triiodothyronine ; Vacuum*

BACKGROUND: Many modern chemistry analyzers are open systems and they can use reagents other than those supplied by the manufacturer of the analyzer. There are many generic reagents for use in open systems. The objective of this study was to evaluate the analytical performance of the BD Lab reagents (BD Lab co., Korea) which were generic reagents. METHODS: Sixteen kinds of reagents of total protein, albumin, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), creatinine, glucose, uric acid, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), total bilirubin, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), lactate dehydrogenase (LD), gamma glutamyl transferase (GGT), calcium, inorganic phosphorus, total cholesterol, triglycerides were tested for precision, linearity and correlation according to the NCCLS guidelines (EP5-A, EP6-A, EP9-A2). Toshiba 200-FR Neo (Toshiba Medical Systems Co., Japan) was used in this evaluation. RESULTS: All reagents showed acceptable precision with total coefficients of variation less than 7%. Comparison of BD Lab reagents with the current reagents by regression analysis resulted in slopes ranging from 0.86 to 1.06 and correlation coefficients more than 0.975. Fifteen of sixteen reagents showed good linearity in broad range. CONCLUSIONS: BD Lab reagents showed good precision, linearity, and correlation. Therefore, we conclude that the BD Lab reagents can be an alternative of currently used reagents in chemistry analyzers.
Alanine Transaminase ; Alkaline Phosphatase ; Aspartate Aminotransferases ; Bilirubin ; Blood Urea Nitrogen ; Calcium ; Chemistry* ; Cholesterol ; Creatinine ; Glucose ; Indicators and Reagents* ; L-Lactate Dehydrogenase ; Phosphorus ; Transferases ; Triglycerides ; Uric Acid

BACKGROUND: We compared two automated Rapid Plasma Reagin (RPR) assay kits with a manual RPR assay kit to evaluate the possibility of using the two automated RPR assays as an alternative to the manual RPR assay for a quantitative monitoring. METHODS: One hundred eighty-five samples were analyzed, including 16 sera from patients with primary, secondary, and latent syphilis. Measured RPR unit (R.U.) values of two automated RPR assay kits, Mediace RPR (Sekisui Chemical Co., Ltd, Japan) and HBi Auto RPR (HBI Co., Ltd, Korea), were compared with the RPR titers of Macro-Vue RPR card test (Becton Dickinson BD Microbiology systems, USA). As a confirmatory test, Anti-Treponema pallidum EUROLINE WB (IgG) and Anti-Treponema pallidum EUROLINE WB (IgM) (Euroimmun, Germany) were used. RESULTS: There was a prozone effect with Mediace RPR at RPR titer (card test) of 1:16, but not with HBi Auto RPR. The R.U. values of the two automated RPR assays did not show proportional increase to the RPR titer. Agreement between manual RPR and two automated RPR assay kits, Mediace RPR assay and HBi Auto RPR assay, were 83.8% and 83.2%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The two automated RPR assay kits could not be used as an alternative to manual RPR test for quantitative analysis of RPR titer. As Mediace RPR shows a prozone effect at relatively low RPR titer, caution is needed in the interpretation of the measured values.
Automation ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Reagent Kits, Diagnostic ; Reagins/*blood ; Sensitivity and Specificity ; Syphilis/*diagnosis ; Syphilis Serodiagnosis/*methods ; Treponema pallidum