Investigation of the effects of collection, transport and storage conditions on the concentration of particular analytes,measured in biological samples collected from patients with kidney disease, for the validation of laboratory procedures or analytical methods.

Research summary

The Wolfson Laboratories at the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU), University of Oxford, have previously undertaken a series of studies using samples of blood and urine from healthy volunteers to investigate the effect of various collection, transport or storage conditions on the concentration of particular components (or on the quality and yield of DNA) and for the validation of laboratory procedures or analytical methods. Separately, CTSU has designed and organised the Study of Heart and Renal Protection (SHARP), a randomised trial of simvastatin plus ezetimibe to investigate whether lowering low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol might benefit patients with kidney disease. This study involved over 9,000 patients with kidney disease, who, in addition to taking randomised treatment, also provided blood and urine samples at various time points during the study. The SHARP samples were collected, processed and stored short-term in 380 local clinical centres in 18 countries before being transferred to the Wolfson Laboratories CTSU for long-term storage. The samples have thus been exposed to potentially different handling and storage procedures and the effect of these processes on the stability of analytes potentially different handling and storage procedures and the effect of these processes on the stability of analytes needs to be better understood. In particular, data on the stability of some analytes only present in significant quantities in patients with kidney disease, like FGF23, are not currently available. To investigate the effects of collection, transport and storage conditions on particular analytes in long term storage from the SHARP study, blood and urine samples need to be collected from volunteer patients with kidney disease attending the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust Kidney Unit (Oxford Kidney Unit) and donated to the CTSU Wolfson Laboratories for multiple laboratory based experiments.

Principal Investigator

Dr William Herrington

Contact us

Email: renalandtransplanttrials@ouh.nhs.uk

IRAS number

83159