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Published on: August 7, 2014
A lipemia-independent NanoDrop(®)-based score to identify hemolysis in plasma and serum samples
Valentina Appierto1, Maurizio Callari, Elena Cavadini
1Unit of Biomarkers, Department of Experimental Oncology & Molecular Medicine, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Via Amadeo 42, 20133 Milan, Italy.
Background:
The identification and management of hemolyzed samples are crucial issues in the development of new blood-based biomarkers.
Results:
Using experiments of controlled hemolysis and lipemia and two plasma series from cancer patients, we developed and validated a lipemia-independent hemolysis score (HS). HS resulted strictly associated with the amount of lysed erythrocytes and with serum index measurement (reference method), highly reproducible, and able to identify as hemolyzed plasma/serum samples containing ≥6.1 mg/dl of free hemoglobin.
Conclusion:
We developed a simple, robust, sensitive, cost-effective, spectrophotometrically-based system to identify hemolyzed plasma/serum specimens. The procedure requires only 2 μl of sample, thus representing a useful tool for research studies and an essential pre-analytical quality control for an optimal biobanking of liquid biopsies.
