Received on April 4, 2008
Accepted on July 28, 2008

Endocrinology and Metabolism

Serum Total Prolactin and Monomeric Prolactin Reference Intervals Determined by Precipitation with Polyethylene Glycol: Evaluation and Validation on Common ImmunoAssay Platforms

¹ Department of Clinical Chemistry, Southend Hospital, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex SSO ORY, UK
² Department of Investigative Endocrinology, St. Vincent's University Hospital, Elm Park, Dublin 4, Ireland

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: thomas.smith{at}ucd.ie.

BACKGROUND: Macroprolactin is an important source of immunoassay interference that commonly leads to misdiagnosis and mismanagement of hyperprolactinemic patients. We used the predominant immunoassay platforms for total prolactin and bioactive monomeric prolactin to assay serum samples treated with polyethylene glycol (PEG) and establish and validate reference intervals for macroprolactin.

METHODS: We used the Architect (Abbott), ADVIA Centaur and Immulite (Siemens Diagnostics), Access (Beckman Coulter), Elecsys (Roche Diagnostics), and AIA (Tosoh) analyzers with samples from healthy males (n = 53) and females (n = 93) to derive parametric reference intervals for total and post-PEG monomeric prolactin. Concentrations of immunoreactive prolactin isoforms in serum samples from healthy individuals were established by gel filtration chromatography (GFC). We then used samples from 22 individuals whose hyperprolactinemia was entirely attributable to macroprolactin and 32 patients with true hyperprolactinemia to compare patient classifications and prolactin concentrations measured by GFC with the newly derived post-PEG reference intervals.

RESULTS: Parametric reference intervals for post-PEG prolactin in male and female serum samples, respectively, were (in mIU/L): 61–196, 66–278 (Centaur); 63–245, 75–381 (Elecsys); 70–301, 92–469 (Access); 72–229, 79–347 (Architect); 73–247, 83–383 (AIA); and 78–263, 85–394 (Immulite). Concordance between GFC and immunoassay-specific post-PEG reference intervals was observed in 311 of 324 cases and for 31 of 32 patients with true hyperprolactinemia and 17 of 22 patients with macroprolactinemia. Results leading to misclassification occurred in a few analyzers for 5 macroprolactinemia patient samples with relatively minor increases in post-PEG prolactin (mean 61 mIU/L).

CONCLUSIONS: Our validated normative reference data for sera pretreated with PEG and analyzed on the most commonly used immunoassay platforms should facilitate the more widespread introduction of macroprolactin screening by clinical laboratories.