[Lactate measurements in sports medicine: comparison of analytic methods]

The measurement of lactate is a major aid for controlling the capacity of an athlete and for establishing individual training schedules. The results are affected by different factors like the site of blood sampling or the distribution of lactate in the blood. The aim of the study was to investigate under constant conditions the results of four different commercially available methods for measuring lactate in blood. All methods were first tested with pure standards of lactate and with different reference sera. Both the accuracy and the reproducibility of the results were good. One method (Lange) showed good accuracy at room temperature but the values were too low at higher temperatures. The enzymatic method was then chosen as reference method for investigations with blood samples. The first method (ESAT) showed excellent correspondence, the results of the second (Lange) were 5-10% too low, and the third method (YSI) showed results too low and were also susceptible to trouble.