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Clinical Chemistry 43: 1094-1096, 1997;
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(Clinical Chemistry. 1997;43:1094-1096.)
© 1997 American Association for Clinical Chemistry, Inc.

Letters

Handling of Blood Samples for Determination of Thalidomide

Tommy Erikssona and Sven Björkman

Hospital Pharmacy, Malmö Univ. Hospital, S-205 02 Malmö, Sweden
a Author for correspondence.


To the Editor:

There is a growing interest in using thalidomide to treat various immunological diseases. Clinical trials or use may include monitoring its plasma or blood concentrations. Thalidomide degrades in aqueous media, the rate of hydrolysis depending on pH and temperature. Thus, the proper handling of blood or plasma samples is crucial. Having developed HPLC methods for determining thalidomide in blood (1)(2), we wish to comment on three recently published protocols for sample handling.

Boughton et al. (3) collected blood in heparin tubes and centrifuged within 15 min. Aliquots of plasma were then transferred to tubes containing twice the volume of 1 mol/L HCl. With this treatment, thalidomide was stable for several weeks even at room temperature. Lyon et al. (4) proposed immersing blood samples in an ice-slush filled cup to take to a clinical laboratory for centrifugation. The plasma aliquots are then transported and stored at -25 °C until analysis. With this procedure, the fraction of thalidomide remaining after 30 days was calculated to 0.90. This method (4) was adapted from an HPLC assay for thalidomide (1) in blood developed in our laboratory; in our method, however, an equal volume of citrate buffer is immediately added to the blood samples, which are then frozen. Huupponen and Pyykkö (5), finally, recommend that blood samples must be handled refrigerated and the plasma separated promptly. They did not address the issue of degradation of thalidomide later during storage of the samples.

Lyon et al. (4) chose not to use our protocol. The reasons were stated to be potential inaccuracy because of variable ratios of liquid buffer:blood . . . [Full Text of this Article]


References

Andrew W. Lyon1,a and Vidmantas A. Raisys2

1 Dept. of Pathol., Royal Univ. Hospital and Univ. of Saskatchewan, 103 Hospital Dr., Saskatoon, SK S7N 0W8, Canada,
2 Dept. of Lab. Med., Box 357110, Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-7110
a Author for correspondence.


To the Editor:


References






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Copyright © 1997 by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.