The tissue thromboplastin inhibition test in the detection of lupus anticoagulants: importance of a correction factor eliminating the influence of fibrinogen level.

Tissue thromboplastin inhibition test (TTI) is a highly sensitive but poorly specific test used in the diagnosis of lupus anticoagulant (LA) which is usually requested for patient with inflammatory status. Therefore, we investigated the influence of fibrinogen level on TTI using Recombiplastin (Ortho), Neoplastine (Diagnostica Stago) and Thromborel S (Behring), in a group of 84 patients with fibrinogen levels ranging from 1.6 to 11.8 g/l. The highly significant (p < 0.0001) positive correlation observed between fibrinogen level and TTI with the 3 thromboplastins allowed the calculation of a new TTI value corrected for fibrinogen level named TTIfg. TTIfg was defined as TTI - ("S" x fibrinogen level) where "S" was the slope of the regression line defining TTI as a function of fibrinogen values. In the group studied, the low TTI specificity, respectively 64%, 67% and 75% with Recombiplastin, Neoplastine and Thromborel S, was greatly improved to respectively 95%, 93% and 95% when results were expressed as TTIfg. TTIfg remained as sensitive as TTI when evaluated in a group of 38 patients with previously diagnosed LA.