Axon clinical chemistry analyzer evaluated according to ECCLS protocol.

We assessed the analytical performance of the Axon system (Bayer Diagnostici), according to the European Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards guidelines, for assay of 12 analytes: cholesterol, creatinine, glucose, total protein, urea, uric acid, alkaline phosphatase, alpha-amylase, aspartate aminotransferase, creatine kinase, sodium, and potassium. The field evaluation lasted approximately 5 months and involved the collection of approximately 10,000 data points with the Axon. The following results were obtained: The highest CVs for controls and human sera at different concentration/activity values were 2.

Chronobiology in the clinical laboratory.

'When to sample?' is a basic question in the clinical laboratory. After some considerations on the concept of biological time in laboratory medicine, the author discusses the implications of sampling time in laboratory tests, either they are performed for diagnosis and prognosis, monitoring therapy, prevention, assessment of risk or for legal reasons.

Glycated proteins in serum: effect of their relative proportions on their alkaline reducing activity in the fructosamine test.

The fructosamine test is considered clinically useful for assessing short-term integrated control of blood glucose, but there are few published data to support this hypothesis. We fractionated glycated and nonglycated proteins by affinity chromatography on phenylboronate columns and, with specific immunochemical methods, determined in the eluted fractions the following proteins, selected according to their biological half-lives and relative concentrations in serum: albumin, IgA, IgG, IgM, apolipoprotein B, haptoglobin, transferrin, alpha 1-antitrypsin, and alpha 2-macroglobulin. We found the following correlations between fructosamine (mmol/L) and, respectively, glycated albumin, IgG, and (albumin + IgG) (each in grams per liter): r = 0.