Terms and Symbols Used in Studies on Biological Variation: The Need for Harmonization

To the Editor: There is an increasing interest among professionals in laboratory medicine to achieve global harmonization, and that needs to go beyond the analytical phase and must include all steps within the total testing process, as well as terminology and units (1). The generation and application of data on biological variation (BV) have been studied for many years (2, 3). Unfortunately, the range of terms and variety of symbols used to define the components of BV has become ever larger with the increasing body of literature. This issue has been given little attention to date. We aimed to ( a ) assess the degree of heterogeneity in terms and symbols used to define the components of BV in the 13 highest ranked clinical chemistry journals in the Web of Science category Medical Laboratory Technology within the 2012 Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports and ( b ) propose terms and symbols to be used in the future. Journals included were Clinical Chemistry, …