Comparison of the Quantum Blue® reader Point-of-Care system versus ELISA technique for therapeutic drug monitoring of Infliximab levels.

Background: Infliximab (IFX) is a monoclonal antibody used to treat patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). For IFX therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM), the most commonly used analysis is enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) which do not allow results to be provided in real-time. The aim of this study was to compare the in-house ELISA (Promonitor IFX) with the much faster assay Quantum Blue® IFX (QB) for quantification of serum IFX concentration among IBD patients in maintenance IFX therapy.

Is a discard tube necessary, when drawing blood for P-Ionized calcium analysis?

Background: Deviation in blood collection procedures is a central source of preanalytical variation affecting overall analytical and diagnostic precision. The procedure of venous blood collection for ionized calcium is hypothesized to affect analytical results. Here, we evaluate the effect of blood collection with and without a discard tube, and storage duration on results of P-Ionized Calcium (pH adjusted = 7.