Very long-term stability of lipid biomarkers in human serum

Abstract

The assessment of the stability of biomarkers is very important for epidemiological studies. In this study, the stability of five lipid parameters (total cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL- and LDL-cholesterol and free fatty acids) has been tested in 16 human serum samples after storage at -80 degrees C up at time points 0, 1, 8 and 13 y. The majority of the lipid biomarkers were stable during storage conditions, except for cholesterol. The correlations between the samples were very good at time points. Therefore, long-term storage of human serum samples allows lipid biomarker determination, provided that the samples are stored at -80 degrees C.