Correction for effect of cold storage on immature platelet fraction.

It is common practice to store samples and measure the immature platelet fraction (IPF) only when the initial standard complete blood count and the blood smear indicate thrombocytopenia. However, the cold storage introduces an inherent error in the %IPF. A falsely elevated %IPF carries the risk of potentially misleading the clinicians' interpretation of the thrombopoietic activity, thus hindering the clinical utility of this parameter.

The effect of storage on the clinical utility of the immature platelet fraction.

The immature platelet fraction (%IPF) is a highly utilised new parameter in the full blood count (FBC) profile. It is a measure of the number of reticulated platelets and hence provides information on platelet transfusion requirements. It is common practice to measure %IPF values on blood samples that are several hours old, however unlike the well known good stability of other well established and more traditional FBC parameters such as haemoglobin and platelet counts, previous animal studies have shown that reticulated platelets are unstable.