What You Can't Miss – In a Nutshell

Stabilizing glucose has a great impact on diagnoses rates of diabetes

• Glucose declines rapidly in whole blood - at a rate of 7-8% per hour - so preventing this decline is important for accurate diagnosis of diabetes mellitus

Some stabilization methods are imperfect or impractical

• Sodium fluoride is a commonly used stabilizer, but whilst it inhibits enolase in the glycolytic pathway, other enzymes remain active and continue to metabolize glucose

Using a VACUETTE® FC Mix tube does the job

• FC Mix tubes contain fluoride to inhibit enolase, citric acid to acidify the sample and inhibit other glycolytic enzymes, as well as EDTA that chelates the magnesium.