November 2015
HRRS now to be made locally
Our HRRS (heparin resistant recalcifying solution) will shortly be undergoing some changes. The pack format will change slightly from 10x5ml to 12x5ml vials with a corresponding small price increase. Manufacturing will still be under ISO quality conditions.
Recently we investigated if HRRS results were affected by FDP/Dimer as questioned by some users.
We used a D-dimer reference plasma from HBM containing 2ug/ml (a high level) and found absolutely no interference in vitro. (ie, APTT results with several reagents were quite similar with regular M/40 CaCl2 as they were with HRRS). Thus HRRS should be reliable for heparin detection in patients with elevated D-dimer; that is unless something else other than D-dimer is affecting results.
During the course of this work we also checked HRRS suitability with various APTT reagents on a wide range of abnormal plasmas and confirmed that it is a very robust and simple method for heparin detection. Please ask for our enhanced product information. Email us for details on ordering
"Storm in a teacup"?
Provocative stuff from Robert Gosselin (UCLA-Davis) recently on LA testing in the highly entertaining "Fritsma Factor" website. Gosselin questions the need for expressing LA test results as ratios relative to normal. He has support from a few associates but not this commentator (TE)! In my view it might be OK for raw clotting time results (ie relative to a reference interval) but not for Screen:Confirm (LS:LR) ratios where different lots of reagent can vary. Normalizing (as currently recommended by CLSI and most other guidelines) results in more consistent RI's allowing more reliable interlaboratory comparisons. There's not a lot of evidence published on this either way because it's so boring but logic should prevail…
I used to be quite sceptical about the value of this website (sponsored by Precision Biologic of Canada) because it seemed to be just a collection of individuals' opinions on coagulation matters (eg, need for incubation in LA mixing tests) but these days George Fritsma supplies references and gets into the detail of interesting enquiries. Another popular recent topic has been which is better; monitoring heparins with APTT or anti FXa methods? It's worth looking at!
Innovative Bioporto Products
ELISA's for thrombin-ATIII complex, APC-PCI complex, D-dimer and FXII heavy chain
This Danish company specializing in monoclonal antibody production, supplies matched antibody pairs for setting up your own ELISA's economically. They are also proposing a kit for labs to prepare their own lateral flow devices for rapid testing.
Among other products (NGAL and MBL tests) they offer antibodies against every known component of the complement system. This could be interesting for example in studies on Anti-Phospholipid Syndrome where it is known that damage from the LA or anti beta 2PGI antibodies in vivo only occurs through a functional complement mechanism. The MBL/MASP-1 complex has thrombin-like activity. Please contact us for further information.
What's with the new logo?
Snake venoms enzymes are a special interest at Haematex. We use Russells viper venom enzymes in our LA testing reagents, and cobra venom to prepare phospholipid depleted plasma for our XACT kits (for microparticles). Do you have any interest in locally made Prot. C activator (like "Protac"), prothrombin activators (like "Ecarin" or "Textarin"), or in Thrombin like enzymes (like "Reptilase")? If so, we are happy to discuss options for the development of these products dependant on your needs. Contact us with your enquiries.