New Automated Immunoassay Allows Laboratories to Manage Increasing Vitamin D Workloads

As the Chief Medical Officers highlight the growing prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the UK, and stress the need for dietary supplementation in certain at risk groups, laboratories in all parts of the country are now using the new, fully automated Roche Elecsys® Vitamin D Total assay to cope with their increasing vitamin D testing workloads. This fast and accurate immunoassay for circulating 25-hydroxy vitamin D (25(OH)D) provides a reliable indication of vitamin D status and ensures fast turnaround of results.

The Coventry and Warwickshire Pathology Services has seen an exponential increase in the number of vitamin D status test requests in the last 5 years. “We now perform about 550 vitamin D total assays every week,” comments Claudia Tomkins, senior clinical biochemist at the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust. “Consolidation of the Elecsys® Vitamin D Total assay onto our main Roche track system has meant that the analysis is now fully automated. Random access and rapid assay time has improved turn-around-times, which means that results are reported more quickly. Furthermore, increased efficiency and reduced staff time requirements have enabled us to make savings of 18% compared to our previous method.”

The Elecsys® Vitamin D Total assay has also helped The Doctors Laboratory (TDL) Whitfield Street Laboratory in London to deal with extremely high workloads of around 3000 vitamin D assays per week. “We were looking for a precise and reliable assay that is economical to run and correlates well with the ‘gold standard’ LC-MS/MS method,” comments Dayan Lloyd-Hennie, Joint Head of Chemistry/Autolab. "We have been using the Elecsys® Vitamin D Total assay from its launch. It demonstrates improved precision and better lot to lot consistency compared to our previous immunoassay. The automation provided by the Roche MODULAR system with MODULAR PRE-ANALYTICS (MPA) is invaluable. It has improved our turnaround times and is suitable for the clinical demands of the service.”

Kingston Hospital has offered a vitamin D testing service for three years and currently performs over 300 assays every week. “Our workload has tripled in the last two years,” comments Principal BMS, William Ellis. “This is largely due to the chronic kidney disease care pathway and screening for vitamin D deficiency, with most of the requests coming from outpatients and general practice.”

“Initially, samples were sent away to a referral laboratory for vitamin D testing but when our workload escalated, we decided to bring the assay in-house in order to achieve savings and to improve turnaround times. We needed a precise and accurate vitamin D assay that would be fast and easy to perform, and which would measure both vitamin D2 and D3.”

“We have been using the new Roche vitamin D Total assay since it became available. It demonstrated improved performance and external quality assurance (NEQAS) when evaluated against two alternative methods, and remains our assay of choice for vitamin D analysis. Due to the high volume of vitamin D requests, we perform the assay daily on our random access cobas® 6000 platform, which is fast and cost effective. The improved specificity for vitamin D2 and D3, and the rapid turnaround time that we can achieve, allows for timely decision making and improved patient care, especially for those who are on vitamin D supplementation.”

The Elecsys® Vitamin D Total assay is available for both Roche MODULAR and cobas analytical platforms. It detects the 25(OH) metabolite of both vitamin D2 and vitamin D3 in serum or plasma, ensuring an accurate indication of vitamin D status. This assay has been standardized against the LC-MS/MS reference method (traceable to National Institute of Technology [NIST]) and demonstrates excellent functional sensitivity (<5 ng/mL) and superior precision, particularly at lower levels, making it ideal for effective patient management