4th Palermo Conference on INNOVATIVE THERAPIES FOR LYMPHOID MALIGNANCIES
Haematologica, Vol 94, Issue 12, 1748-1752 doi:10.3324/haematol.2009.010322
Copyright © 2009 by Ferrata Storti Foundation
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Disorders of Iron Metabolism

Results of the first international round robin for the quantification of urinary and plasma hepcidin assays: need for standardization

Joyce J.C. Kroot1, Erwin H.J.M. Kemna1, Sukhvinder S. Bansal2, Mark Busbridge3, Natascia Campostrini4, Domenico Girelli4, Robert C. Hider2, Vasiliki Koliaraki5, Avgi Mamalaki5, Gordana Olbina6, Naohisa Tomosugi7, Chris Tselepis8, Douglas G. Ward8, Tomas Ganz6,9, Jan C.M. Hendriks10, Dorine W. Swinkels1

1 Department of Clinical Chemistry, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2 Pharmaceutical Sciences Division, King’s College London, London, UK
3 Department of Clinical Chemistry, Imperial College HealthCare NHS Trust, Hammersmith Hospital Campus, London, UK
4 Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Section of Internal Medicine, University of Verona, Verona, Italy
5 Laboratory of Molecular Biology & Immunobiotechnology, Department of Biochemistry, Hellenic Pasteur Institute, Athens, Greece
6 Intrinsic Life Sciences, La Jolla, CA, USA
7 Division of Advanced Medicine, Medical Research Institute/Division of Nephrology, Kanazawa Medical University, Ishikawa, Japan
8 CRUK Institute for Cancer Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
9 Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, LA, USA
10 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Correspondence: Dorine W. Swinkels, Department of Clinical Chemistry, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, P.O. Box 9101 6500 HB, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-Mail: D.Swinkels{at}akc.umcn.nl

The recently discovered iron regulatory peptide hormone hepcidin holds promise as a novel biomarker in iron metabolism disorders. To date, various mass spectrometry and immunochemical methods have been developed for its quantification in plasma and urine. Differences in methodology and analytical performance hinder the comparability of data. As a first step towards method harmonization, several hepcidin assays were compared. Worldwide eight laboratories participated in a urinary and plasma round robin in which hepcidin was analyzed. For both urine and plasma: (i) the absolute hepcidin concentrations differed widely between methods, (ii) the between-sample variation and the analytical variation of the methods are similar. Importantly, the analytical variation as percentage of the total variance is low for all methods, indicating their suitability to distinguish hepcidin levels of different samples. Spearman correlations between methods were generally high. The round robin results inform the scientific and medical community on the status and agreement of the current hepcidin methods. Ongoing initiatives should facilitate standardization by exchanging calibrators and representative samples.

Key words: hepcidin, iron, quality control.




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G. Bergamaschi and L. Villani
Serum hepcidin: a novel diagnostic tool in disorders of iron metabolism
Haematologica, December 1, 2009; 94(12): 1631 - 1633.
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