New research shows in-house total T₄ test can be as accurate as reference laboratory testing

Given that thyroid disease is common, especially in older pets, and the clinical signs sometimes subtle, it’s typically recommended to include total T₄ (TT₄) in chemistry profiles for all cats greater than seven years of age and for dogs with any hint of hypothyroidism. Furthermore, patients receiving therapy for thyroid disease require frequent monitoring of TT₄. No matter how you look at it, TT₄ is a frequently run, essential test.

Despite the demand for thyroid testing, the share of chemistry profiles containing total T4run in-house, on analyzers, such as the Catalyst Dx  and Catalyst One  chemistry analyzers, is much lower than the share sent to the reference laboratory. The reference laboratory is a wonderful resource, to be sure, but when tests aren’t performed in-house that could be, the customer experience suffers, and patients miss out on real-time results that could lead to the right treatment, sooner. 

And now, new research slated for publication in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine shows that in-house TT₄ testing can be as accurate as reference laboratory testing.^1,2 Two prestigious groups just presented their favourable evaluations of the Catalyst Total T₄ Test to the congress of the European College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ECVIM Congress 2016). Both studies, one coauthored by researchers from IDEXX and Purdue University and the other coauthored by researchers from IDEXX and the Animal Endocrine Center in New York City, show excellent correlation of the Catalyst Total T₄ Test to the method used at the reference laboratory. What’s better than one research group demonstrating excellent performance? Answer: two!

In fact, the new Catalyst Total T₄ Test was designed to match the performance of reference laboratory testing, and these peer-reviewed abstracts confirm that our design specifications are delivering in practice, at the point of care.

In addition to increased accuracy, the new Catalyst Total T₄ Test was designed to address other pain points we heard from veterinarians and technicians surveyed in our product development research. 

1. It’s got to be load-and-go.
   Nobody likes running a separate test or rotor to add TT₄ to the profile. So, for the Catalyst Total T₄ Test, we designed a slide that could be simply added to the top of any chemistry profile, “topping off” your profile, if you will—no second sample and no second work flow. 
2. Out-of-range results are frustrating—and not very useful.
   Many other in-clinic TT₄ tests have a limited dynamic range. That means for many tests, rather than receiving an easy-to-read, specific value, you’d get a frustrating greater than (>) or less than (<) sign—and nobody likes those! Out-of-range results hinder patient monitoring because it is hard to determine the trend for that patient. In response, for the Catalyst Total T₄ Test, we made the reportable range as wide as what is encountered in the reference laboratory.
3. It must be robust.
   Compromised samples, with lipemia, icterus, and hemolysis, are all too common in real life. The test must continue to report accurate results with as many of these samples as possible. The unique design of the Catalyst slide means this is a test that stands up to the sort of imperfect samples that are inevitable day-to-day.