Standardization of reticulocyte values in an antidoping context.

Abstract

The lack of standardization of reticulocyte results hinders the ability of sports authorities to recognize the telltale fluctuations over time that are typical for athletes using illegal blood doping to improve their performance. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to devise a tenable approach for antidoping authorities to quantify, instrument bias. We evaluated reticulocyte data derived during a 42-week period from 210 hospital patient blood samples measured in duplicate simultaneously on up to 11 hematology analyzers located in a single laboratory. We found that square root transformation of reticulocyte values enabled quantification of interinstrument bias by using the mean reticulocyte value of a cohort of approximately 54 subjects as a de facto calibration agent. We also demonstrated that measurement precision associated with low reticulocyte values was not inferior to that associated with higher values.