Rajeswari S

The objective of the study is to compare the analytical performance in terms of precision and accuracy of three methods viz., Immunoturbidimetry (IT), Capillary Electrophoresis (CEP) and High Performance Liquid Chromotography (HPLC) for the measurement of glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c). A total of 40 routine patients samples were used for the estimation of HbA1c using the three methods and the results obtained were correlated between the three methods. The correlation coefficient ‘r’ obtained between IT & CEP, IT& HPLC and CEP & HPLC were 0.96, 0.95 & 0.99 respectively, indicating that an ‘r’ value of 0.99 obtained between CEP & HPLC is in agreement with the CLIA guidelines value of > 0.98,while poor ‘r’ values of 0.96 and 0.95 were obtained when IT method was compared with both CEP and HPLC methods. As per this study both CEP & HPLC methods gave good precision and accuracy for Bio-Rad controls. Further, CEP and HPLC methods have provisions to identify interference by Haemoglobin variants present in patient sample. The outcome this study recommends the use of one of the two methods viz., CEP and HPLC for routine measurement of HbA1c.

Studies carried out in the past have shown that in infectious diseases there is increase in the levels of Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR), White Blood Corpuscles (WBC) and liver enzymes Alanine Aminotransferase (ALT), Gamma GlutamylTransferase (GGT) and Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH).  There are other inflammatory markers like C reactive protein (CRP) and Procalcitonin, both of which are altered in several infectious diseases.  This study is an attempt to find out the correlation of ESR  to WBC and  several analytes of liver function tests such as  Aspartate aminotransferase (AST), ALT,  ALP,  GGT and  Albumin.  Results available for 100 patients attending the master health check up were used to find out the above associations. Very good correlations were observed between ESR and WBC for all patients (p