Objective This study aimed to systematically evaluate the interference of 49 commonly used clinical drugs on 60 routine biochemical tests, providing a foundation for clinical laboratories to establish drug-interference alert systems and support more accurate result interpretation. Method We tested 49 drugs at three concentrations (baseline, therapeutic C1, supra-therapeutic C2) on 60 biochemical assays following CLSI EP07. For each drug-test combination, a single patient serum/plasma pool was split into three aliquots: baseline, C1-spiked, and C2-spiked. All samples were analyzed using a Mindray BS-2800M fully automated biochemical analyzer. Results at C1 and C2 were compared with baseline (zero concentration) to characterize drug-induced interference with each biochemical test. Results At concentration C1, 23 drugs exhibited no interference across all 60 biochemical tests. Among the 2,940 drug-test combinations evaluated, C1 generated 27 cases (0.9%) of strong interference, mainly within liver function assays, and 40 cases (1.4%) of weak interference. The majority (97.7%) exhibited no detectable effect. At concentration C2, a total of 2,820 drug-test combinations were included in the analysis. Strong interference was detected in 103 cases (3.7%), primarily affecting liver and lipid profiles, alongside 117 cases (4.1%) of weak interference. Nonetheless, 92.2% of combinations still showed no interference. Conclusion This study provides a comprehensive profile of drug-induced interference across 60 routinely performed biochemical tests. These findings could support the accurate interpretation and interference identification of laboratory results.
Yu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.