It’s Time for a Better Blood Collection Tube to Improve the Reliability of Glucose Results

Glucose is unstable in whole blood (1). Fluoride-containing tubes are used to reduce glycolysis, especially when very accurate glucose results are required. Complete inhibition of glycolysis by fluoride can take as long as 4 h, during which time glucose can fall as much as 10 mg/dL (0.6 mmol/L) at room temperature (1), even in samples with normal blood cell counts. This is because fluoride inhibits the enzyme enolase, which acts late in the Embden-Meyerhof pathway, thus allowing the “breakdown” of glucose to intermediate molecules earlier in the glycolytic cycle (2). Is there a better fluoride …