Are your lab results accurate?

[Tatyana]

I want some of you lads to consider this before you dish out a fair amount of money for an internet lab test:

- only two labs in the US are accredited, this is a new thing for the US. This means any lab monkey could set up a lab or even worse, they could just fake lab results.

http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/fda-compliance-news/iso-15189-medical-laboratory-accreditation-a2la

- testosterone is notoriously difficult to measure and its accuracy and precision is not great, so if you get a dodgy lab, which does seem highly possible in the US, it is no better than a random number generator

- without someone who understands lab results, they are very difficult to interpret. I do find it quite disconcerting at the number of lads who get very stressed by a slightly elevated liver enzyme, or those that are not concerned at all with a very dodgy result.

- just because you get a number does not mean it is correct.

I am going to check on a few of the other things that makes a lab a good lab tonight and I will let you know what I find.

[maxititer]

I want some of you lads to consider this before you dish out a fair amount of money for an internet lab test:

- only two labs in the US are accredited, this is a new thing for the US. This means any lab monkey could set up a lab or even worse, they could just fake lab results.

http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/fda-compliance-news/iso-15189-medical-laboratory-accreditation-a2la

- testosterone is notoriously difficult to measure and its accuracy and precision is not great, so if you get a dodgy lab, which does seem highly possible in the US, it is no better than a random number generator

- without someone who understands lab results, they are very difficult to interpret. I do find it quite disconcerting at the number of lads who get very stressed by a slightly elevated liver enzyme, or those that are not concerned at all with a very dodgy result.

- just because you get a number does not mean it is correct.

I am going to check on a few of the other things that makes a lab a good lab tonight and I will let you know what I find.

very often values are different when tests done in different labs at the same time. Accredited lab means that all processes in this lab validated by authority, that is only way to know that you are getting correct results. Because accredited lab can be tested by authority at any time, they will keep standards high.

Also lab should provide normal reference values as normal values can be different depending on testing method used in those or another lab.

Most often miss interpreted test is CPK creatinine phospho kinase - this lab test very difficult to interpret because normal values are very individual and CPK almost does not have "normal" normal value. In athletes CPK always elevated and that does not means accelerated cells breakdown, when cells consuming more nutrients cell membrane becoming more permeable and some amount of CPK can easy get into the blood.

Fake results much more common practice then any one can imagine. Suppose lab got order for 20 PSA tests and they have only 18 test kits left. In such situation these 2 results can be just written by lab technician. By doing so, they can cut expenses on test kits too, for some busy lab that can be very big amount per year.