Olympus launches D-Dimer for AU Chemistry Family

OLYMPUS LIFE AND MATERIAL SCIENCE EUROPA GMBH ??Diagnostics, today announced the launch of a D-Dimer immunoturbimetric assay for use on its AU family of clinical chemistry systems. D-Dimer continues to grow in importance as a frontline assay for early rule-out of both Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) conditions - Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) - and Pulmonary Embolism (PE).

The need for D-Dimer testing is increasingly clear ??according to the American Heart Association, DVT blood clots alone affect some 2 million and complications kill up to 200,000 people annually in the US, with similar figures in Europe. However there are currently few assays available for fully-automated analyser platforms. The new Olympus D-Dimer assay has been developed by the Olympus in-house R&D team to ensure full compatibility across the AU family of medium to ultra-high throughput clinical chemistry systems.

According to Product Manager Peter Rene Hesse, the new assay meets the special challenges of VTE testing: "Since D-Dimer is used as a rule-out assay, clinical sensitivity is of paramount importance along with negative predictive value (NPV). Due to a lack of an international reference standard, Olympus employs the commonly used and accepted cut-off value of 0.5 ?g FEU/mL, which means that customers do not need to change EQA data. With results in less than 10 minutes, we are confident that the Olympus D-Dimer assay will make a real contribution to front line testing for this devastating and potentially fatal condition."

Olympus will be rolling out the new assay across all European markets in a series of road shows over the coming months.