Beckman Coulter Expands Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Menu, Adding QMS^® Amikacin and QMS^® Quinidine Assays

Beckman Coulter, Inc., a leading manufacturer of diagnostics instruments in the U.S., has expanded its therapeutic drug monitoring test menu to include two new User Defined Reagents (UDR): QMS^® Amikacin and QMS^® Quinidine.

The QMS Amikacin assay (AMKX) measures aminoglycoside concentrations in human serum or plasma to guide and monitor dosing regimens and to evaluate toxicity and efficacy of Amikacin, an antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections.

The second new assay, QMS Quinidine (QINX), measures concentrations of the drug Quinidine in human plasma or serum. Quinidine is a major antiarrhythmic agent used to treat and prevent arrhythmias. Careful monitoring of this drug is important due to its narrow therapeutic index and similarity in patient response to sub-therapeutic and toxic amounts of the drug.

Reagents and calibrators for both new assays are liquid and ready-to-use, which helps laboratorians save time by eliminating the need for mixing, hydrating or pre-diluting reagents before testing.

The Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM) assays available through Beckman Coulter are specifically engineered and packaged to provide speed, accuracy, ease-of-use and economy for the most effective TDM analysis. When used in conjunction with a UniCel^® or Synchron^® clinical system, these high quality assays provide timely, reliable and efficient TDM results.

Beckman Coulter's chemistry test menu is one of the most comprehensive in the industry, offering more than 100 analytes for routine chemistry, STAT and specialty testing, and including panels for lipid, cardiac, therapeutic drug monitoring, drugs of abuse and thyroid testing.

Clinicians rely on therapeutic drug monitoring to measure specific drugs at intervals, in order to maintain a relatively constant drug concentration in the bloodstream. Therapeutic drugs tend to have a narrow therapeutic range — meaning the quantity required to be effective is not far from the quantity that causes significant side effects and/or toxicity.

The QMS Amikacin and QMS Quinidine assays are manufactured by Thermo Fisher Scientific and distributed by Beckman Coulter as part of its broad menu of automated chemistry assays.