The presence of lipid in a grossly lipaemic plasma/serum sample can have significant effect on various chemistry parameters and is a problem in many routine biochemistry departments. In a small study, Jessica Thibeault looks at the effect of an innovative clearing system.
Lipaemia in plasma/serum can result in a sample that is simply too cloudy to be read on a chemistry analyser, making it necessary to use time-consuming manual techniques. Now, a complete system for clearing lipaemic samples has been available from Rapid Sample Processing for a couple of years. The simple system involves the addition of a lipaemic serum/plasma sample to a StatSpin LipoClear prefilled tube, mixed and left to stand for five minutes. The sample is then centrifuged to concentrate the lipid at the bottom of the tube.
StatSpin also offers a choice of centrifuges that are ideal for dealing with lipaemic samples. Using the StatSpin MP centrifuge, two lipaemic samples can be cleared in just 95 seconds. Alternatively, using the StatSpin Express 2, up to four samples can be processed in three minutes. The final option is the StatSpin Express 3, which can process up to eight samples in three minutes.
Once centrifuged, the clarified sample is removed for analysis and the results are multiplied by a factor of 1.2 when finished.
Effect on analytes
Recently, a study investigated use of the LipoClear lipaemic clearing agent in order to confirm that it does not interfere with the methodologies used for the determination of the most common chemistry analytes tested in the clinical laboratory.
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