Report of the Korean Association of ExternalQuality Assessment Service on AutoimmuneTesting (2018–2019)

ABSTRACT

Under the Korean Association of External Quality Assessment Service,autoimmune proficiency testings (PT) for six test items were performed in2018–2019 for laboratory quality improvement. We conducted two trials peryear and sent three PT materials for anti-nuclear antibody (ANA) testing andtwo PT materials for anti-mitochondrial antibody (AMA), anti-smooth muscleantibody (SMA), anti-thyroglobulin antibody (anti-Tg), anti-thyroperoxidaseantibody (anti-TPO), and anti-double stranded DNA antibody (anti-dsDNA)testing in each trial. The analysis was conducted based on the informationand results of each test item entered by the laboratory. The report comprisedof a common report that showed the characteristics of all the participatinglaboratories and a laboratory-specific report that showed the assessmentdata of individual laboratories. The intended response rates for ANA, AMA,SMA, and anti-dsDNA qualitative tests were over 97.5%, 88.2%, 85.0%, and90.4%, respectively. The coefficient of variations for anti-Tg and anti-TPO was10.4%–70.1% and 16.6%–21.0%, respectively. The number of participatinglaboratories in 2019 was more than that in 2018. We believe this statisticalreport will be useful to interpret external PT results and set up autoimmuneassays at each laboratory.