Usage Because of supply limitations it is impractical to use IS as working standards in laboratories; hence the main use of International Standards is to calibrate national, regional or local standards. For plasma assays, most reagent manufacturers issue commercial plasma standards that are calibrated in International Units against the appropriate International Standard. The considerable quality control (QC) requirements for manufacturers of plasma standards could lead to excessive demand on the supply of WHO Standards, and to mitigate this, a secondary
plasma standard calibrated for multiple analytes and available in large quantities, has been developed under the auspices of the ISTH; this is known BMS-777607 nmr as the SSC/ISTH Secondary Coagulation Standard. Factor VIII The first IS for FVIII, established in 1971 [4], was a concentrate of low purity, typical of the relatively few products available at that time. It was calibrated against pools of fresh normal plasma in the 20 participating laboratories. The variability among laboratories in this first international collaborative study
was extremely high, with potencies covering a 10-fold range. Variability was somewhat lower in assays of lyophilized plasma, but this was not stable enough to qualify as an IS. The first IS for FVIII was used successfully to calibrate manufacturers’ concentrate standards, but its use to calibrate plasma
standards such as the British PD0332991 Plasma Standards for FVIII 上海皓元 was less satisfactory because of high inter-laboratory variability and a 20% difference between the results of one-stage and two-stage assays [9]. This is another example of the “like vs. like” principle: it became clear that a separate international plasma standard for FVIII would be desirable to calibrate local and commercial plasma standards. Changes in the method of collection and handling of plasma and in freeze-drying techniques led to improved stability of FVIII in lyophilized plasma, and eventually the first international plasma standard for FVIII was established in 1981 [10], by assay against normal plasma pools in participants’ laboratories. It was also calibrated for FVIII:Ag (previously named FVIIIC:Ag), and for von Willebrand factor antigen and activity. Because of their high usage, both FVIII Concentrate and FVIII Plasma Standards have been replaced at fairly frequent intervals. One of the main issues has been the relationship of the IU to “average normal plasma”, which has been tested for each replacement by comparing the new standard against both the old standard and against plasma pools. When the first IS was established, the FVIII:C content of plasma pools in participating laboratories covered a twofold range; this wide variability emphasizes both the need for an IS and also the difficulty of making this comparison.