DRUG INTERFERENCE IN LABORATOTY TESTS

Abstract

Drug Laboratory Tests Interference (DLTI) is currently considered one of the important problems of medicine. The ability of drugs to affect metabolism, displace endogenous and exogenous substances from bonds, interfere with chemical reactions during laboratory research can lead to false-positive or false-negative results, and as a result of incorrectly established diagnosis, incorrect therapy and deterioration of the patient’s condition.
 To highlight the problem of DLTI, summarize the information obtained from scientific sources for workers in the medical field.
 Medicines can affect the results of laboratory tests through technological or pharmacological (physiological) interference. Predicting DLTI is substantially difficult, since the sources of information on pharmacological interference consist mainly of instructions for medical use of drugs, for analytical - spontaneous reports. Very often, the information is fragmentary, insufficiently documented, and contradictory. In order to avoid diagnostic errors as much as possible, medical workers need to strictly follow the recommendations regarding the pre-analytical stage, emphasize to the laboratory workers what medicines the patient is taking. In order to facilitate the work of medical professionals in various countries, electronic databases with checked information about DLTI are being developed. However, in order to refer to the above databases, a medical professional must have a suspicion of a possible drug interaction with laboratory tests. Decision support programs are recommended to be developed and implemented to automate DLTI reporting.