Scottish Parliament Calls for the Use of Active-B12 Test

Pernicious anemia is a chronic illness usually caused by impaired absorption of Vitamin B12 or a dietary Vitamin B12 deficiency. Vitamin B12 is essential for the nervous system so as well as causing anemia and macrocytosis (enlarged red cells), deficiency can also cause inflammation of the nerves and dementia. The elderly are at particular risk of developing pernicious anemia.

The current gold-standard serum vitamin B12 test is somewhat unreliable and can typically miss approximately half of deficient patients. Axis-Shield Limited, part of Alere Inc., has developed an innovative new product called Active-B12 to address the diagnostic challenges presented when trying to diagnose B12 deficiency. When the carrier protein transcobalamin binds to B12, the resulting complex is known as holotranscobalamin (HoloTC). This HoloTC complex represents approximately 10-30% of the Vitamin B12 circulating in the blood and is the only form of Vitamin B1 that is taken up and used by cells of the body (hence ActiveB12).

Scottish Parliament recently debated the growing prevalence of pernicious anemia as it poses a significant health problem, affecting more than 100,000 Scots. It was revealed during the parliamentary debate that Active-B12 offered superior accuracy compared to the other available blood tests for the diagnosis of B12 deficiency. Additionally, all of the speakers who participated in the debate urged general practitioners and health boards to adopt Active-B12 as their primary diagnostic tool for these cases, and data from several recent publications support the view that Active-B12 is the most effective front-line assay for the diagnosis of B12 deficiency.

“We are pleased that Scottish Parliament understands the serious risks pernicious anaemia and Vitamin B12 deficiency pose to public health,” said Colin King, a managing director from Axis-Shield. “We are also encouraged by the fact that Parliament recognizes the promise of Axis-Shield’s Active-B12 test for diagnosing these diseases as well as its superiority to other accepted diagnostic methods, which have proven to be ineffective in identifying significant portions of the B12-deficient population. We remain committed to expanding the test’s availability through further licensing arrangements, especially as commercial interest continues to grow.”

The Active-B12 test (HoloTranscobalamin) is available globally through Abbott Diagnostics and run on Abbott’s AxSYM® and Architect platforms. Axis-Shield plans to launch an ELISA-based (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) format within the next few weeks. More details are available at www.active-b12.com.