Patent Issues on Prothrombin Time Reagents

A U.S. patent has been granted to Careside, Inc. (Culver City, CA, USA) that covers the reagents used in its new blood clotting test cartridge for the company's blood testing instrument, the Careside Analyzer. The reagents in the cartridge allow the test to be performed rapidly and near the patient. The test can be performed within 10 minutes after a blood specimen has been collected from the patient.

The reagents were developed and co-patented by Careside and International Teledyne Corp. (Edison, NJ, USA). The patent relates to prothrombin time reagents prepared from recombinant tissue factor and synthetic phospholipids, a method for preparing the reagents under dry, ambient conditions, and a method for using the reagents.

The Careside Prothrombin Time (PT) test cartridge is the first on a small, portable instrument that separates the plasma from whole blood specimens to produce a better measurement of prothrombin time, says Careside. Typically, point-of-care PT test instruments perform testing on unseparated whole blood, which may provide different results than PT performed on plasma.




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