EVALUATION OF THE PERFORMANCE OF CLINICAL LABORATORIES IN SUDAN IN MEASURING SOME ENDOCRINE HORMONE LEVELS USING ELISA AND RIA

Abstract

A prospective study conducted during the period, November 2003 to May 2004, to evaluate the performance of clinical laboratories in Sudan in measuring of some endocrine hormone levels using ELISA and RIA. A total of 42 serum samples, which were randomly taken from different individuals of both sexes, were analyzed for thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) (pituitary-derived hormone) and thyroxine (T 4) (thyroid- derived hormone). The results obtained for both hormones, using the two different in vitro techniques, were statistically analyzed using ‘t’ test, correlation coefficient and linear regression. The results obtained showed that there were no significant differences between RIA and ELISA in TSH measurement (mean. Diff. – 0.1002 mU/L, SD 1.417 and P > 0.05), while in T 4 measurement there were significant differences between RIA and ELISA (mean. Diff. – 41.742 nmol/L, SD 36.462 and P <0.05). Both TSH and T4 measurements showed that there was a correlation between RIA and ELISA (62% and 83.2%, respectively). According to the analysis of the results obtained by the model of simple regression, it could be suggested that RIA was superior to ELISA in measurement of both hormones.