A Commercial Electrochemical Method Evaluated for Measurement of Iron Status

I evaluated a commercial electrochemical method (Environ-mental Science Associates), based on potentiostatic coulom-etry, for determining iron and total iron-binding capacity (TlBc). The method requires 25 and 100 44 of serum, respectively, for these measurements. Serum iron concen-trations so determined in 99 normal volunteers satisfactorily correlated with those determined by the Iron Panel Method (Br J Haematol 1978;38:291-4), although the former re-quired correction for lower-than-expected values. The coulo-metric TIBC results, on the other hand, correlated poorly with those by the Iron Panel Method. However, when the samples for TIBC were prepared according to the Iron Panel Method, by using the magnesium carbonate technique, and then read in the coulometer, there was satisfactory correlation between TIBC values as determined by the two methods. Variabilit