title: Laboratory medicine: the precursors strike back.
abstract: Laboratory Medicine represents a major component of healthcare and nowadays it is involved in more than seventy percent of medical decisions. The value of any innovative laboratory test will depend on its clinical sensitivity and specificity. This clinical value is of course influenced by the analytical performance and reliability of the assay. Some spectacular advances in the understanding of circulating forms were recently accomplished with an emphasis place on prohormones and analytes precursors. Release of prohormones in the blood flow may be of major impact to improve diagnosis and risk stratification but may also influence the analytical specificity of some commercial assays. The goal of this short review is to discuss some perspectives related to some analytes' precursors that have recently been evidenced to affect assay specificity or increase assay discriminatory power.
authors.affiliation: Department of Laboratory Medicine, Cliniques Universitaires St-Luc, Brussels, Belgium. damien.gruson@uclouvain.be
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gruson
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lindberg
mesh_terms: D019411:Clinical Laboratory Techniques; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000097:blood / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D020097:Natriuretic Peptide, Brain / Q000097:blood / Q000502:physiology; D010446:Peptide Fragments / Q000097:blood / Q000502:physiology; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000097:blood / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011498:Protein Precursors / Q000097:blood / Q000502:physiology*; D018805:Sepsis / Q000097:blood / Q000503:physiopathology*
chemical_list: D010446:Peptide Fragments; D011498:Protein Precursors; C109794:pro-brain natriuretic peptide (1-76); D020097:Natriuretic Peptide, Brain