Stability of athlete blood passport parameters during air freight.

Introduction: Fluctuations in ambient temperature and pressure, as well as physical jostling, may affect the stability of whole blood samples transported by air freight. The aim of this study was to characterize the stability of key blood variables during air freight and to investigate whether vibration or reduced pressure alone affected results.

Methods: Over a 72-h interval, we evaluated the stability of full blood count indices (plus reticulocytes) in tubes that were air-freighted a total of 2, 10 and 28 h.

Preanalytical mixing of whole-blood specimens in the context of the Athlete Passport.

Background: Full blood counts are now used as evidence that athletes have used banned blood doping. This has led to legal scrutiny of the efficacy of preanalytical procedures such as specimen homogenisation.

Aims: To characterise the impact of different mixing strategies on whole-blood homogeneity.