Significance of high sensitive CRP assay for early detection of newborn babies infection diseases

We have evaluated the accuracy of high sensitive CRP assay method using evanescent wave Immunoassy system(Evanet 20) and significance of this assay on the early detection of infectious diseases in newborn babies. In this assay system, prozone phenomenon was not detected up to 40 mg/dl. The reproducibility of this assay was quite good and the intra run CV value of the same sample was less than 5% for the assay of serum, plasma and whole blood. There was a high correlation between the CRP values in the serum and plasma(r = 0.98, regression formula y = 0.89x + 4.07). Similarly, the values in whole blood and serum samples were quite well correlated(r = 0.98, regression formula y = 0.91x - 6.75). Various humoral elements such as bilirubin, hemoglobin and Chyl did not significantly influence this assay method. A slight increase in blood CRP was clearly demonstrated in the early phase of infectious diseases of newborn babies and monitoring of CRP by this assay system seemed to be quite useful to detect the early phase of infectious diseases in newborn babies. This assay system requires only a small quantity of whole blood to perform quantitative analysis of very small amounts of other substances. Accordingly, this assay system seems to be quite effective for monitoring minute increases in various proteinaceous blood components in emergent laboratory examination or POCT.