Biochemia Medica : časopis Hrvatskoga Društva Medicinskih Biokemičara

Reporting a measurement procedure and its analytical performance following method evaluation in a peer-reviewed journal is an important means for clinical laboratory practitioners to share their findings. It also represents an important source of evidence base to help others make informed decisions about their practice. At present, there are significant variations in the information reported in laboratory medicine journal publications describing the analytical performance of measurement procedures. These variations also challenge authors, readers, reviewers, and editors in deciding the quality of a submitted manuscript...

INTRODUCTION: Olanzapine is an atypical antipsychotic drug which is effective in the treatment of schizophrenia. Cigarette smoking, age, and sex could be related to the pharmacokinetics and serum concentrations of olanzapine in patients with schizophrenia. The aim of the study was to examine whether there was a significant difference in the serum olanzapine concentrations with regard to the mentioned factors. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 58 outpatients with schizophrenia (37 smokers, 42 men, 35 older than 40 years) participated in the study...

The gold standard for long-term monitoring of diabetic patients is glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), which is routinely tested for glycaemic control. Furthermore, the National glycohemoglobin standardization program (NGSP) has designated high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) as the reference method for HbA1c measurement. A woman from the Sumba tribe, Indonesia, aged 52, visited the Internal Medicine Clinic for a routine check-up. She had been taking diabetic and hypertension medicines on a regular basis for over 10 years...

INTRODUCTION: We determined age- and gender-specific reference intervals (RIs) for acylcarnitines and amino acids by tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) in the Turkish paediatric population by using laboratory information system (LIS) data. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 9156 MS/MS results of children between 0-18 years of age, were downloaded from the LIS. Premature infants and newborns followed in the intensive care unit were excluded and only the first result of each patient attending outpatient clinics was included...

Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA) are mainly associated with medium and small vessel vasculitis. Two main methodologies currently available for detection of these antibodies are indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) and monospecific proteinase 3 (PR3) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) based immunoassays. However, well-defined guidelines regarding mode of testing for ANCA in laboratories still don't exist, leading to problems in diagnosis and further patient management. Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies testing by IIF and enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) often pose a significant challenge in diseases other than vasculitis and in overlapping autoimmune conditions...

Carbohydrate sulfotransferases (CHST) catalyse the biosynthesis of proteoglycans that enable physical interactions and signalling between different neighbouring cells in physiological and pathological states. The study aim was to provide an overview of emerging diagnostic and prognostic applications of CHST. PubMed database search was conducted using the keywords "carbohydrate sulfotransferase" together with appropriate inclusion and exclusion criteria, whereby 41 publications were selected. Additionally, 40 records on CHST genetic and biochemical properties were hand-picked from UniProt, GeneCards, InterPro, and neXtProt databases...

Cardiorenal syndrome (CRS), first defined in 2004 as a consequence of the interactions between the kidneys and other circulatory departments leading to acute heart failure, has since been recognized as a complex clinical entity that is hard to define, diagnose and classify. The framework for the classification of CRS according to pathophysiologic background was laid out in 2008, dividing CRS into five distinct phenotypes. However, determining the timing of individual organ injuries and making a diagnosis of either renal or cardiac failure remains an elusive task...

It's been 10 years now from the debut of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) era in which gene engineering has never been so accessible, precise and efficient. This technology, like a refined surgical procedure, has offered the ability of removing different types of disease causing mutations and restoring key proteins activity with ease of outperforming the previous resembling methods: zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs)...

Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is one of the most common microvascular complications of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes and the most common cause of the end-stage renal disease (ESRD). It has been evidenced that targeted interventions at an early stage of DKD can efficiently prevent or delay the progression of kidney failure and improve patient outcomes. Therefore, regular screening for DKD has become one of the fundamental principles of diabetes care. Long-established biomarkers such as serum-creatinine-based estimates of glomerular filtration rate and albuminuria are currently the cornerstone of diagnosis and risk stratification in routine clinical practice...

Renal tubular acidosis (RTA) is a rare disorder that can be inherited or acquired, and results in an inability of the kidneys to maintain normal acid-base balance. We present a case of recurrent, severe hypokalaemia and rhabdomyolysis in a young woman who had an associated normal anion gap metabolic acidosis and was subsequently diagnosed with distal RTA associated with Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Distal RTA associated with Hashimoto's thyroiditis is rare and probably develops because of autoimmune-mediated mechanisms, causing an inability of the H+ -ATPase pump in alpha-intercalated cells of the cortical collecting duct to secrete H+ , with subsequent failure of urinary acidification...

INTRODUCTION: Although current guidelines recommend not drinking coffee prior to phlebotomy, our hypothesis is that drinking coffee does not affect the clinical interpretation of biochemical and haematological test results. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty-seven volunteers were studied in basal state (T0) and 1h after (T1) drinking coffee. Routine haematological (Sysmex-XN1000 analyser) and biochemistry parameters (Vitros 4600 analyser) were studied. Results were compared using the Wilcoxon test (P < 0...

INTRODUCTION: Tocilizumab is used in patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia and high concentration of IL-6. We studied potential prognostic role of neutrophil and lymphocyte count regarding tocilizumab treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We enrolled 31 patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia and higher serum IL-6 concentration. The samples were taken on the day of tocilizumab administration and five days later. We used ROC analysis to investigate the association between the analysed parameters and 30-day mortality in order to determine the best pre-treatment and post-treatment prognostic factor...

INTRODUCTION: Icterus, if not detected, can affect the validity of results delivered by clinical laboratories, leading to erroneous results. This study aims to define bilirubin interference for some biochemical analytes and compare it with the manufacturer's data. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Serum pools prepared with outpatients' samples were spiked with increasing bilirubin concentration (Merck, reference14370, Darmstadt, Germany) up to 513 µmol/L in order to evaluate the bias for the following biochemical analytes: creatinine (CREA), creatine kinase (CK), cholesterol (CHOL), gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL), and total protein (TP)...

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study was to perform a verification of the Dymind D7-CRP automated analyser and compare it with established analysers. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Analytical verification included estimation of repeatability, between run precision, within-laboratory precision, and bias in control samples with low, normal and high levels. The acceptance criteria for analytical verification were defined using the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM) 2019 Biological Variation Database...

INTRODUCTION: Immunoassays are the most common method in routine practice for measuring androgens in women. Study's aim was to establish new population specific indirect reference intervals (RI) for dehydroepiandrostenedione sulphate (DHEAS) and for new androstenedione test available on automated Roche Cobas electrochemiluminescent immunoassay method. MATERIALS AND METHODS: From extracted laboratory records, testosterone, sex hormone binding globulin and follicle-stimulating hormone were used as reference tests to exclude possibly diseased women...

INTRODUCTION: Blood plasma represents a large reservoir of cytokines and other mediators of inflammation. Higher estimated plasma volume status (ePVS) has been shown to correlate with increased thrombotic risk in polycythemia vera patients, but its clinical and prognostic associations in patients with myelofibrosis are unknown which we aim to evaluate in this study. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively analysed a multicentric cohort of 238 patients with primary (PMF) and secondary myelofibrosis (SMF)...

INTRODUCTION: COVID-19 and vaccination may affect some parameters of the complete blood count (CBC). The aim of this study was to determine reference intervals (RI) of CBC in healthy population with different COVID-19 and vaccination backgrounds and compare them with those established previously. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in donors who attended the Traumatology Hospital "Dr. Victorio de la Fuente Narváez" (HTVFN) from June to September 2021...

Clinical laboratory practice represents an essential part of clinical decision-making, as it influences 60-70% of medical decisions at all levels of health care. Results of biochemical laboratory tests (BLTs) have a key role in establishment of adequate diagnosis as well as in evaluation of treatment progress and outcome. The prevalence of drug-laboratory test interactions (DLTIs) is up to 43% of patients who had laboratory results influenced by drugs. Unrecognized DLTIs may lead to misinterpreted BLTs results, incorrect or delayed diagnosis, extra costs for unnecessary additional tests or inadequate therapy, as all may cause false clinical decisions...

INTRODUCTION: Chylous abdominal effusions are serious complications that can be triggered by various aetiologies. The biochemical diagnosis of chyle leakage in ascites or in peritoneal fluid capsules relies on the detection of chylomicrons. Assaying the fluid's concentration of triglycerides is still the first-line tool. Given that only one comparative study has sought to quantify the value of the triglyceride assay for diagnosing chylous ascites in humans, our objective was to provide practical triglyceride thresholds...

Kimura disease (KD) is an unusual inflammatory disease of unknown etiology. Despite being described many years ago, KD might cause diagnostic difficulty or be confused with other conditions. Here, we present a 33-year-old Filipino woman who was referred to our hospital for evaluation of persistent eosinophilia and intense pruritus. Blood analysis and peripheral blood smear review showed high eosinophil counts (3.8 x109 /L, 40%) that did not show morphological abnormalities. Besides, high serum IgE concentration was detected (33,528 kU/L)...