Test-strip method for measuring lactate in whole blood.

Area of Science:

• Biochemistry
• Clinical Chemistry
• Sports Medicine

Background:

• Lactate measurement in whole blood is crucial for clinical diagnostics and sports performance monitoring.
• Existing methods for lactate analysis can be time-consuming or require specialized equipment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a novel dry reagent strip system for rapid and accurate blood lactate determination.
• To assess the performance characteristics of the new system, including precision and correlation with established methods.

Main Methods:

• Development of a dry reagent strip incorporating lactate oxidase, horseradish peroxidase, and a chromogenic substrate.
• Measurement of blood lactate using the reagent strip with a reflectometer, and estimation without the instrument.
• Validation against a standard lactate oxidase method using blood samples from healthy subjects before and after exercise.

Main Results:

• The dry reagent strip system demonstrated good precision, with between-run coefficients of variation ranging from 2.9% to 5.3%.
• Lactate concentrations measured by the strip correlated highly (r = 0.97) with a comparison method.
• The system allows for both instrumental and visual estimation of lactate levels.

Conclusions:

• The developed dry reagent strip system is a convenient, rapid, and accurate tool for measuring blood lactate.
• This system has significant potential for application in clinical settings and sports medicine for real-time lactate monitoring.