Comparison of three microtube column agglutination systems for antibody screening: DG Gel, DiaMed-ID and Ortho BioVue

The aims of the present study were to evaluate the estimated diagnostic accuracy of a new microtube column agglutination system (DG Gel, Diagnostic Grifols, Barcelona, Spain), to analyse the antibody reactivity and to compare the data with the two well-established DiaMed-ID and Ortho BioVue systems. We collected 3024 consecutive samples from blood donors, transfusion recipients and pregnant women, and 100 samples containing antibodies of known specificity. All these samples were tested in parallel by the three microtube agglutination systems. The estimated sensitivity was 100% for DG Gel and Ortho BioVue and 97.58% for DiaMed-ID. The estimated specificity was 99.93% for Ortho BioVue and 100% for DiaMed-ID and DG Gel. The score mean and range of the antibody titration of DG Gel, DiaMed-ID and Ortho BioVue were 34.31 (5-119), 30.3 (3-121) and 37.38 (3-112), respectively. All three column agglutination systems work well showing a high estimated diagnostic accuracy.