Margaret M. Hayes1, K M Ferguson1, S.L. Jeffcoate1, R R A Bacon2, Surajit Gorai2
1Chelsea Hospital for Women, Dovehouse Street, London SW3
2UK External Quality Assessment Schemes, Immunoassay Section, Department of Clinical Chemistry, 12 Bristo Place, Edinburgh EH1 1ED, UK
Tóm tắt
Radioimmunoassay kits prepared in the Chelsea Hospital for Women for follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinising hormone (LH) have been used in 26 UK laboratories for over 2 years. Data from the UK External Quality Assessment Schemes for FSH and LH have been used to provide an independent assessment of the performance of these kits over a 12-month period. For both analytes, users of the kits were found to have: a low variability of the bias, implying good within-laboratory, between-assay precision; a lower between-laboratory, within-sample geometric coefficient of variation than users of ‘own’ methods, implying better between-laboratory agreement; method bias that did not differ significantly from laboratories using ‘own’ method protocols. This survey indicates that a non-commercial organisation can produce immunoassay kits that improve the quality of FSH and LH assays generally available.
