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Dear Colleagues,
I am performing some toxicity tests on mice of some novel formulations (BUN,
Creatinine, Aminotransferases). I need to know if I will collect blood in
empty tubes or tubes containing anticoagulants (EDTA, heparin or citrate)
and if these tests will be affected by these anticoagulants.
Abdel
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E-mail: abdel.omri.at.nrc.ca
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If you are measuring Calcium/Magnesium or other divalent cations, EDTA will
affect these results. If you are measuring sodium and use a tube containing
sodium heparin you will get falsely elevated levels. For rapid analysis
many labs prefer plasma so that they can spin and immediately analyze the
sample. If immediate results are not necessary, serum (no anticoagulant) is
possibly better. If you want to know the effects of a drug on an
inflammatory process and you chose fibrinogen as an endpoint, then the
anticoagulant is necessary. I often pull two samples, an EDTA for cell
counts, morphology and fibrinogen and a serum for chemistry. I use larger
animals though, and multiple samples from mice might shorten your
experiment/increase the numbers of animals required. All three of the tests
you list below can be performed on serum. Jeff Lakritz
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In general we use lithium heparin for such clinical chemistry
parameter estimates since this does not affect the estimates and also
allows measurement of plasma sodium if required.
Fiona Stavros
Texas Biotechnology Corp..
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Copyright 1995-2010 David W. A. Bourne (david@boomer.org)