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Technical Briefs: Wolfgang Korte and Walter Riesen Latex-enhanced Immunoturbidimetry Allows D-Dimer Determination in Plasma and Serum Samples Clin Chem 2000; 46: 871-872 [Full text] [PDF]

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D-Dimer in Citrated Plasma and Serum

Manfred Lammers   (15 June 2000)

D-dimer in plasma and serum

Wolfgang Korte   (20 June 2000)

D-Dimer in Citrated Plasma and Serum 15 June 2000
Manfred Lammers Dade Behring Marburg GmbH, Marburg, Germany Send letter to journal: Re: D-Dimer in Citrated Plasma and Serum Manfred_Lammers{at}dadebehring.com Manfred Lammers	The authors present an interesting report about similar D-Dimer concentrations in citrated plasma and serum. They do not mention any correction for the dilution of the citrated plasma, which will vary between 15 % and 19 % for hematocrit values between 0.37 and 0.54. This implies that the corrected D-Dimer concentration in citrated plasma will be higher than that in serum, in contrast to previous concerns. It would be interesting to know whether this difference originates from a loss of D -Dimer during clotting or by matrix effects of citrated plasma in the assay used.
D-dimer in plasma and serum 20 June 2000
Wolfgang Korte IKCH, kantonsspital, 9007 St. Gallen Send letter to journal: Re: D-dimer in plasma and serum wolfgang.korte{at}gd-ikch.sg.ch Wolfgang Korte	Re eLetter by Lammers: A D-dimer concentration "corrected" for the hematocrit in serum cannot be determined because the hematocrit cannot be measured in non-anticoagulated samples. This would, however, be required to truely compare the influence of the packed cell volume on the respective D -dimer concentrations. Both loss of D-dimer during the clotting process in serum and matrix effects in citrated plasma (or their combination) seem possible explanations; to our knowledge, neither of these has been further elucidated. It has been suggested in the past that antibodies used in D-dimer assays can be sensitive to more than one molecular species (Pfitzner et al., Thromb Haemost 1997,78:1069), which might further influence the results obtained from different matrices. We are currently evaluating the comparibility of the two matrices in a larger population and hope to be able to answer some of these questions in the future.