DCl Bile Acids
 

DCL’s Bile Acids Assay sets a new standard for clinical accuracy

The innovative stable liquid formulation of DCL’s Bile Acids assay introduces an enhanced level of performance and ease of use to the veterinary clinical chemistry laboratory.  The enzyme recycling technology of DCL’s Bile Acids amplifies the signal from the low levels of bile acid analyte commonly found in clinical samples, yielding test results with superior sensitivity, accuracy and reduced interferences compared to existing diagnostic methods.  Because of its increased sensitivity, our Bile Acids assay requires a smaller patient specimen than conventional methods and is ideally suited to the small samples commonly encountered in the veterinary laboratory.

Issues in enzymatic, colorimetric bile acids assays

Although methods for the enzymatic, colorimetric determination of serum bile acids have been commonly used in the veterinary laboratory for many years, these methods have some well known limitations.  Specifically, traditional enzymatic, colorimetric bile acids assays use nitro blue tetrazolium (NBT/Formazan) as color indicators coupled to NAD.  These formazan dyes are used to increase test sensitivity, however, they are insoluble in water and may stain tubes and cells of chemistry analyzers.  In addition, these older NAD/NBT-based methods have significant interference issues when hemolysis and lipemia are present in clinical specimens. 

Lipemia

Bile acids are commonly drawn as part of a set of fasting and post-prandial test samples.  Lipemia is a common occurrence in post-prandial samples.  As seen in this interference graph, even modest lipemia can introduce significant analytical bias with NBT-based methods.  DCL’s Bile Acids shows more reliable results in lipemic samples than NBT-based enzymatic colorimetric methods due to its unique rate chemistry and signal amplification method.  While pre-analytical procedures such as ultracentrifugation and overnight refrigeration of lipemic specimens can reduce some of the lipemic interference, these procedures are time consuming and may be considered impractical for clinical work.  Chemical treatment with agents such as Liposol or Lipoclear for lipemia may result in artificial depressions of bile acids values.

DCL’s Bile Acids Reagent is compared to Trinity Biotech’s^® Bile Acids
on a Roche Hitachi^® 911 using Trinity’s recommended parameters. 
*Data on file at DCL.

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