Proposed reference method for iron in serum used to evaluate two automated iron methods.

The manual Reference Method of the Centers for Disease Control for serum iron (CDC/RM/Fe) and a semiautomated adaptation of it were used to evaluate two working methods: one, a detergent solubilization procedure for the Roche Cobas-Bio analyzer, the other, the Kodak Ektachem 700 procedure, based on dry-film technology. The CDC/RM/Fe and its semiautomated version gave essentially the same results for 40 sera from hospital patients. This semiautomated version was in turn compared with the two working procedures in a study involving 200 patients. Each of the working methods correlated well with the semiautomated CDC/RM/Fe method. Separate recovery and interference studies indicated satisfactory analytical recovery of iron in all cases, but the detergent solubilization method was found to be susceptible to interference by hemoglobin, lipemia, and bilirubin.