title: Evaluation of a commercially available rapid urinary porphobilinogen test.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Demonstration of substantially increased urinary excretion of porphobilinogen is the cornerstone of diagnosing acute porphyria crisis. Because porphobilinogen testing is not implemented on clinical chemistry analysers, respective analyses are available in rather few clinical laboratories. The aim of this study was to critically describe and to evaluate a semi-quantitative rapid test for urinary porphobilinogen determination which is commercially available and recommended by the American Porphyria Foundation.
  
  
  METHODS
  Urinary samples from patients with acute intermittent porphyria and control samples were analysed and the semi-quantitative results were compared with the results obtained by a manual quantitative spectrophotometric method.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In all 32 samples studied, acceptable agreement between the results of the rapid test and the quantitative test was observed. Handling of the test was found to be convenient.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The assay was found to be reliable and has the potential to increase the availability of porphobilinogen testing in the field.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Clinical Chemistry, University of Munich, Munich, Germany. michael.vogeser@med.uni-muenchen.de
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vogeser
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stauch
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D011162:Porphobilinogen / Q000652:urine*; D017118:Porphyria, Acute Intermittent / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000652:urine; D013997:Time Factors; D016482:Urinalysis / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D011162:Porphobilinogen