Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences (QAEHS), The University of Queensland, 20 Cornwall Street, Woolloongabba, 4102, QLD, Australia.
Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences (QAEHS), The University of Queensland, 20 Cornwall Street, Woolloongabba, 4102, QLD, Australia.
Int J Hyg Environ Health. 2021 Sep;238:113860. doi: 10.1016/j.ijheh.2021.113860. Epub 2021 Oct 11.
Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a range of persistent organofluorine contaminants, some of which have been found to accumulate in humans and have long half-lives. In longitudinal studies, when relying on measurements obtained at different points in time, it is critical to understand the associated analytical uncertainties when interpreting the data. In this manuscript we assess precision measurements of serum PFAS analysis in a follow-up study undertaken approximately 5 years after the initial study. These measurements included intra-(n = 58) and inter-batch duplicates (n = 57), inter-batch replicates (n = 58), inter-laboratory replicates (n = 10) and a re-analysis of 120 archived serum samples from the initial study. Average coefficients of variation (CV) for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) associated with the reanalysis of archived samples ranged from 4 to 8%, which was greater than the inter- and intra -batch duplicates (<3%), but lower than the inter-laboratory comparison (CV ≥ 10%). Multi-centre analytical capacity in studies increases the variance within the dataset and implementation of variability-measures are useful to refine and maintain comparability. Due to long PFAS half-lives, this variance is an important consideration when deciding appropriate time intervals for sample collections in longitudinal studies, to ensure the difference is greater than the analytical uncertainty.
全氟和多氟烷基物质（PFAS）是一系列持久性有机氟污染物，其中一些已被发现在人类体内积累并具有较长的半衰期。在纵向研究中，当依赖于不同时间点获得的测量值时，在解释数据时，了解相关分析不确定性至关重要。在本文中，我们评估了大约在初始研究后 5 年进行的一项随访研究中血清 PFAS 分析的精密度测量值。这些测量值包括内（n=58）和批间重复（n=57）、批间重复（n=58）、实验室间重复（n=10）以及对初始研究中 120 个存档血清样本的重新分析。与重新分析存档样本相关的全氟辛酸（PFOA）、全氟己烷磺酸（PFHxS）和全氟辛烷磺酸（PFOS）的平均变异系数（CV）为 4%至 8%，高于批内和批间重复（<3%），但低于实验室间比较（CV≥10%）。研究中的多中心分析能力增加了数据集中的方差，实施变异性措施有助于提高和保持可比性。由于 PFAS 的半衰期较长，因此在决定纵向研究中样本采集的适当时间间隔时，这种方差是一个重要的考虑因素，以确保差异大于分析不确定性。
