Does your Vitamin D Test Measure Up?

 

Recently a plethora of scientific research has increased knowledge regarding key roles of vitamin D in health and disease, and sparked a tremendous increase in demand for laboratory analysis of vitamin D status. In effort to meet the increased demand several automated high throughput vitamin D assays have become available. Unfortunately several commonly used immunoassays, one of which has been utilised extensively in the past to establish reference ranges, have been found to be inaccurate and associated with high inter-laboratory variability.

  The immunoassays are unable to distinguish between serum levels of 25-hydroxy (OH) vitamins D2 and D3. Further, having abandoned the traditional solvent extraction of samples, the immunoassays are prone to non-specific interferences.