Serum ultrafiltration for the elimination of endogenous interfering substances in creatinine determination

Serum, at neutral pH, was submitted to a simple filtration, using centrifugation in the disposable Centrisart. The ultrafiltrate was similar to serum in its creatinine content but was virtually free from proteins, including protein-bound bilirubin, haemoglobin and lipoproteins. The creatinine concentrations of anicteric serum specimens and the corresponding ultrafiltrates as determined with Jaffé and enzymic procedures show a high correlation and are convertible. With icteric sera the negative interference effect of bilirubin in a particular analytical procedure can be quantified using ultrafiltrate as the reference. It is suggested that ultrafiltration is useful in selected cases for eliminating elevated concentrations of bilirubin, haemoglobin and turbidity, which would interfere in the direct creatinine determination. Relative to the continuous flow methods with dialysis of the analyte, direct methods for creatinine are more susceptible to interference by endogenous factors like hyperbilirubinaemia, hypertriglyceridaemia and haemolysis (1). The negative interference by bilirubin is of special importance, since it interferes in some modifications of the kinetic Jaffé method (2) and in the chromogenic enzymatic method (3). As a simple alternative, we evaluated the use of serum ultrafiltrate for the accurate determination of creatinine by the Jaffé and enzymatic methods, free from interfering by the high-molecular serum matrix and compounds bound to it.