Endocrine Abstracts

Pregnancy causes significant physiological changes that can alter the results of thyroid function testing. The changes in circulating plasma-binding protein (TBG) concentrations interfere with FT4 estimate methods, and the hCG thyrotropic effect impacts TSH activity estimation. A TSH assay is the most sensitive test to assess thyroid status. T4 levels have been implicated as associated with fetal neurodevelopment. During pregnancy, differences in FT4 concentrations have been d...

Background: Parathyroid hormone (PTH) assay is critical for diagnosis of calcium disorders and intraoperative (IO) monitoring of parathyroid surgery. We evaluated the new Access® Intact PTH (iPTH) on the UniCel® DxI 800 (Beckman Coulter).Methods: Imprecision was evaluated for routine and intraoperative (15 min) procedures, at 3 control levels, run 20 times in duplicate over 10 days (NCCLS EP5-A protocol). Normal values wer...