Can glucose preservatives be avoided in blood samples?

Objective:To evaluate the effect of cooling of whole blood samples without an anticoagulant and glucose preservative on glucose and other commonly measured clinical analytes by serial measurements over a three hour period. Methods: Thirty healthy adult volunteers about 20-50 years old,from Kasturba Medical College,Manipal (2008) were the participants. After obtaining informed consent from each participant,blood was collected (2 mL each) in three vacutainers-one without the use of an anticoagulant and glucose preservative,one with sodium fluoride-potassium oxalate and the other with disodium ethylene diamine tetraacetic (EDTA). Automatic analyzer Hitachi was used to measure glucose and other common clinical laboratory analytes,every hour for three hours. Results: The refrigerated samples without an anticoagulant and preservative,showed slightly lower values of glucose as compared to fluorinated samples but difference between these groups was not statistically significant (P value> 0.05).Also cooling had no effect on other analytes except potassium.Conclusion: Fluoride preservative as a regular practice for glucose samples can be avoided if the samples can be processed quickly as fluoriated samples also show a marginal fall in glucose values.

Objective：To evaluate the effect of cooling of whole blood samples without an anticoagulant and glucose preservative on glucose and other commonly measured clinical analytes by serial measurements over a three hour period. Methods： Thirty healthy adult volunteers about 20-50 years old,from Kasturba Medical College,Manipal （2008） were the participants. After obtaining informed consent from each participant,blood was collected （2 mL each） in three vacutainers-one without the use of an anticoagulant and glucose preservative, one with sodium fluoride-potassium oxalate and the other with disodium ethylene diamine tetraaeetic （EDTA）. Automatic analyzer Hitachi was used to measure glucose and other common clinical laboratory analytes, every hour for three hours. Results： The refrigerated samples without an anticoagulant and preservative, showed slightly lower values of glucose as compared to fluorinated samples but difference between these groups was not statistically significant （ P value 〉 0.05 ）. Also cooling had no effect on other analytes except potassium. Conclusion： Fluoride preservative as a regular practice for glucose samples can be avoided if the samples can be processed quickly as fluoriated samples also show a marginal fall in glucose values.