Abstract
Vitamins are micronutrients that are necessary for human health; however, their testing in hospital clinical laboratories is restricted. Health insurance in Japan allows only vitamin D, B1, B2, B12, C, and folic acid measurements. Additionally, most of the vitamin measurements are complicated to perform. Therefore, the testing at hospital’s clinical laboratories has been carried out less for vitamins than for other nutrients. Vitamin deficiency is characterized by a variety of non-specific clinical manifestations, which is the reason why vitamin testing is not carried out in clinical laboratories.
Currently, vitamin B12, folic acid, and vitamin D can be measured with an automated immunoassay analyzer; therefore, health insurance admitted vitamin measurements are expected to increase in future. Under such circumstances, we have standardized vitamin B12, folic acid, and vitamin D measurements. Standardization, by converging inter-laboratory and inter-instrument variations, yields an accurate measurement that leads to a reliable nutritional assessment. In this review, we discuss the current status of vitamin testing in the field of clinical laboratory medicine. Furthermore, we introduce vitamin studies performed in our laboratory.
