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Indirect estimation of pediatric between-individual biological variation data for 22 common serum biochemistries

Tze Ping Loh1, Michael Patrick Metz2

  • 1From the Department of Laboratory Medicine, National University Hospital, Singapore; tploh@hotmail.com.

American Journal of Clinical Pathology
|April 16, 2015
PubMed

Insights

This study introduces a data mining method to determine biological variation in children, providing age-specific reference data for serum biochemistry. These findings offer valuable insights into pediatric health monitoring.

Area of Science:

  • Clinical Chemistry
  • Pediatric Medicine
  • Biostatistics

Background:

  • Deriving between-individual biological variation (CVg) data typically requires repeat sampling, which is challenging and undesirable in pediatric populations.
  • Pediatric reference intervals are crucial for accurate diagnosis and monitoring of children's health.
  • Existing databases for biological variation often lack comprehensive pediatric data or rely on invasive sampling methods.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To describe an indirect sampling (data mining) approach for obtaining between-individual biological variation (CVg) data in children.
  • To estimate CVg and index of individuality for boys and girls by year of age using existing pediatric clinical data.
  • To provide age-specific CVg trends for serum biochemistry in children.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized a dataset of 6,989 children from Queensland, Australia, with 22 serum biochemistry results from two tests within a year.
  • Applied data mining techniques to estimate CVg and index of individuality based on Fraser and Harris's recommended procedures.
  • Analyzed data stratified by age and sex to identify trends in biological variation.

Main Results:

  • CVg was generally higher in the first year of life, stabilizing by age 4-6 years for most analytes.
  • Specific analytes (AST, ALT, GGT, phosphate) showed increasing CVg after age 10.
  • Most serum biochemistries had indices of individuality ≤ 0.6, with some exceptions (sodium, anion gap, bicarbonate, chloride) ranging from 0.6 to 1.4, showing stability across ages.

Conclusions:

  • The derived CVg data are comparable to established pediatric and adult reference databases.
  • This study presents novel, age-specific CVg trends for pediatric serum biochemistry in both boys and girls.
  • The indirect sampling method offers a feasible alternative for obtaining essential biological variation data in children.
Abstract

Keywords:
Between-individualBiological variationChildrenData miningIndirect samplingReference

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