Effects of Prolonged Ambient Storage of Sodium Fluoride/Heparin Specimens on Plasma Homocysteine

摘要

Increased plasma homocysteine is regarded as a risk factor for arterial and venous occlusive disease. Sample collection ideally requires use of cooled EDTA containers and immediate centrifugation of the blood (1). These conditions may be hard to maintain in a clinic and are not possible in the many medical practices that lack a centrifuge. We tested whether analyzing uncentrifuged EDTA or NaF/heparin plasma bears a greater risk of giving false-positive homocysteine results under these conditions.Blood was drawn from 50 healthy volunteers (40 female and 10 male) into 1 EDTA and 4 NaF/heparin Vacutainers (Becton Dickinson), which were stored at room temperature. The Vacutainers were randomly assigned to groups—EDTA-15min, NaF/heparin-15min, NaF/heparin-24h, NaF/heparin-48h, and NaF/heparin-144h—and centrifuged at 2700 g for …