A multi-centre evaluation of the measurement of high density lipoprotein cholesterol by the Reflotron assay.

A multi-centre study was undertaken to evaluate the performance of the Reflotron high density lipoprotein cholesterol method in twelve different clinical chemistry hospital laboratories. Results were compared with phosphotungistic acid/Mg2+ and polyethylene glycol/dextran sulphate/Mg2+ precipitation methods, routinely performed in these laboratories. Precision was found to be excellent, for both the day-to-day results (SD = 0.03 mmol/l) and for the overall between-laboratory precision (SD = 0.02 mmol/l), measured with control sera. HDL cholesterol concentrations measured with the Reflotron system were about 10% lower than those obtained with the two routine precipitation methods, using different instruments with different cholesterol standardization procedures.