Clinical chemistry
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Comparative Study
Natriuretic peptides as markers of mild forms of left ventricular dysfunction: effects of assays on diagnostic performance of markers.
We compared the performance of different natriuretic peptides to diagnose mild forms of left ventricular dysfunction (LVD) and investigated the influence of measuring B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) and N-terminal proBNP (NT-proBNP) with different assays on the diagnostic performance of these markers. ⋯ The performance of BNP for the diagnosis of systolic or diastolic LVD is not affected by the assay used, whereas the performance of NT-proBNP for the diagnosis of isolated diastolic LVD is assay dependent.
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The A3243G mitochondrial tRNA leu(UUR) point mutation causes mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes (MELAS) syndrome, the most common mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) disorder, and is also found in patients with maternally inherited diabetes and deafness syndrome (MIDD). To correlate disease manifestation with mutation loads, it is necessary to measure the percentage of the A3243G mtDNA mutation. ⋯ The real-time ARMS-qPCR method provides rapid, reliable, one-step quantitative detection of heteroplasmic mutant mtDNA.
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Multicenter Study
Analytical and clinical evaluation of the Bayer ADVIA Centaur automated B-type natriuretic peptide assay in patients with heart failure: a multisite study.
B-Type natriuretic peptide (BNP) is released from the left ventricle of the heart into the circulation in response to ventricular stretching and volume overload. Increased BNP concentrations are associated with heart failure (HF). ⋯ The ADVIA Centaur is the first commercially available BNP assay for use on an automated immunochemistry platform. This assay has good analytical and clinical performance characteristics for diagnosing HF.