Preparation of Whole Blood Quality Control Materials for Blood Glucometer

Abstract

It has been forecasted that diabetic patients in Thailand will increase to 4.3  million

people in 2030. In order to prevent, control and surveillance of the risk group for diabetes, the Ministry of Public Health has launched measures to screen for the risk group using questionnaire and measure finger pricked blood glucose by using point of care blood glucometers. The blood glucometers are now widely used in primary health care hospitals but commercial whole blood control with known glucose ranges are required for quality control and these control materials are costly and sometimes unaffordable. The objective of this study was to develop the in-house whole blood controls based on 2 different protocols. The first protocol used 30 mM glyceral- dehyde (GA) while the second protocol used a combination of 30 mM GA and 2.4 mM sodium iodoacetate (IA) These control materials were examined for the homogeneity, stability and accuracy. The whole blood controls consisted of low, normal and high glucose levels. Protocol 1 showed high homogeneity, stability up to 23 days at 4oC and accuracy of 85.59%,

92.60% and 94.65%, respectively. The whole blood controls from protocol 2 had high homogeneity, stability up to 35  days at 4oC and accuracy of 99.95%, 99.94% and 99.99% for low, normal and high glucose levels, respectively. In conclusion, the whole blood preparation

method in protocol 2 described in this study provided reliable materials for quality control of the glucometers. However, further studies are required before the application in primary health care hospitals.