Evaluation and comparison of a radiative energy attenuation method for determining cholesterol in serum

Determination of cholesterol by a radiative energy attenuation (REA) technique was evaluated and compared with results obtained by the Boehringer Mannheim High Performance Cholesterol Assay and the Du Pont aca. Within-assay and between-assay CVs for the REA method, for two sets of controls, were both less than 5%. We observed no interference with lipemic samples. Analytical recovery averaged 102.8%. We used all three methods for parallel determinations of 217 patients' samples containing a wide range of cholesterol concentrations. Linear regression analysis of the REA results vs those of the comparison methods were as follows: REA = 1.03 Boehringer - 0.072 (r = 0.993) and REA = 1.02 aca - 0.048 (r = 0.995). We also discuss bilirubin interference with the REA method for cholesterol.