Comparison of Arkray/ELITech ADAMS HA-8180V® with Bio-Rad Variant,™II Turbo2.0® and Tosoh Bioscience HLC®-723G8 for HbA1c Determination

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate a new ion-exchange HPLC system to measure hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) in comparison to two other widely used HPLC systems. Methods: Analytical performance and hemoglobin variants detection was assessed on the new Arkray/ELITech ADAMS HA-8180V (R), in parallel to BioRad Variant (TM) II Turbo 2.0 (R) and Tosoh Bioscience HLC (R)-723G8. A method comparison and concordance for the classification of patients according to the American Diabetes Association (ADA) categories was performed using kappa test. Results: ADAMS HA-8180V (R) demonstrated excellent within-run imprecision (0%) and between-run imprecision: <= 1.21% using blood sample and <= 0.94% using quality controls. Method comparison of ADAMS HA-8180V (R) with the two other systems yielded very high coefficient correlation (r > 0.995). A very good agreement (kappa value >= 0.81) was observed between methods for the classification of patients according to the ADA categories. In addition, all systems were able to detect the presence of most classical variants such as HbC, HbS, HbD, and HbE. Conclusion: The Arkray/ELITech ADAMS HA-8180V (R) demonstrated high analytical performance similar to previous systems such as Biorad (TM) Variant II Turbo 2.0 (R) and Tosoh Bioscience HLC (R)-723G8. The three systems allow a high-quality HbA1c measurement and appeared interchangeable for diabetes diagnosis or for the therapeutic monitoring of patients without hemoglobin variants. (C) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.