Abstract
Background: Recently, measurement of amino terminal propeptide of type III procollagen (PIIINP) was introduced as a part of the hepatic cirrhotic marker enhanced liver fibrosis™ test on the automated ADVIA Centaur® immunoassay platform (Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics Inc., Tarrytown, NY, USA). In this article, we show that the Centaur PIIINP may be used in place of the much more labor-intensive RIA method, and we present an age stratified reference interval.
Methods: We analyzed four control samples 20 times over a period of 5 days. Centaur PIIINP assay measurements were compared with the widely used UniQ PIIINP RIA assay (Orion Diagnostica, Espoo, Finland) using 55 patient samples (range=3.7–43.3 µg/L). Furthermore, we established a reference interval based on samples from 287 blood donors.
Results: In the concentration range 2.5–11.9 µg/L, the total imprecision was below 8%. Comparison with the UniQ PIIINP RIA assay yielded: Centaur PIIINP µg/L=1.9×(UniQ PIIINP RIA)+0.6 µg/L, r2=0.94. The reference interval for the Centaur PIIINP assay showed no gender difference but was stratified by age [4.0–11.0 µg/L (18–40 years) and 3.5–9.5 µg/L (41–70 years)].
Conclusions: We conclude that the Centaur PIIINP assay is suitable for routine use with our newly defined reference interval. The results obtained by Centaur correlates well with those obtained by the previously employed RIA, though the absolute values are higher.
Birgitte Høvsgaard is acknowledged for expert technical assistance and advice.
Conflict of interest statement
Authors’ conflict of interest disclosure: The authors stated that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this article. The company donating the kits had no influence in the design of the study and did not participate in preparation of the manuscript.
Research funding: None declared.
Employment or leadership: None declared.
Honorarium: None declared.
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