Klinisk Biokemi i Norden Nr 1, vol. 20, 2008 - page 52

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| 1 | 2008
Klinisk Biokemi i Norden
The beginning of a new year is
the time to look back of the past
year; what has happened and
what has been accomplished. It
is the time to write the annual
report of 2007. The past year
was a busy year for the IFCC.
The two important highlights of
the year are the two congresses
held during the year. 17th IFCC
- FESCC European Congress of Clinical Chemistry
and Laboratory Medicine, EuroMedlab 2007 in
Amsterdam, June1-3 was also 60th National Congress
of the Netherlands Society for Clinical Chemistry
and Laboratory Medicine. The second congress was
11th APCB Congress held in Beijing, Oct 14-19. I
have reported of these congresses in my previous
columns.
In 2007 IFCC gained one new Full member. The
Montenegrin Association of Clinical Chemistry
and Laboratory Medicine (MACC) was approved
unanimously as a new Full Member by the IFCC
membership via a mail ballot. MACC is now the
77th Full Member within the Federation. Palestinian
Medical Technology Association was approved as a
new Affiliate Member. IFCC also gained three new
Corporate Members.
One of the highlights of the year was that a
Scandinavian colleague received IFCC recognition
for his work. The 2007 IFCC/Abbott Distinguished
Award for Contributions in Molecular Diagnostics
was presented to Professor Ulf Landegren, from
Uppsala, Sweden, during the EuroMedlab 2007
Congress in Amsterdam.
The new HbA1c standardization has been dis-
cussed widely during the year. The voting for the
new term and measurement unit for HbA1c took
place in the beginning of the year and the majority of
the IFCC membership approved the proposal of the
Working Group. Only two societies of those voted
IFCC News
Päivi Laitinen
E-post: paivi.h.laitinen@ppshp.fi
did not approve the proposal. The Working Group
on Standardization of HbA1c published a position
paper (CCLM 2007;45(8):1077–1080) and a recom-
mendation for term and measurement unit for HbA1c
(CCLM 2007;45(8):1081–1082).
The debate on this issue continued last spring.
IFCC contacted the societies dealing with diabe-
tes (American Diabetes Association, European
Association for the Study of Diabetes, International
Diabetes Federation) and invited them for a meeting
to discuss this issue more thoroughly. The meeting
took place in Milano in May and as a result of this
meeting a consensus statement was signed and pub-
lished in several journals, and it is available on the
IFCC website (www.ifcc.org). The consensus state-
ment calls for a worldwide adoption of the new stand-
ard reference method. This statement recommends
reporting HbA1c results in mmol/mol (SI units) and
derived NGSP units (%), using the IFCC-NGSP
master equation. There is also the option of reporting
an “interpretation” of the HbA1c result as “estimated
average glucose” (eAG). These proposals will not only
have a significant impact on Laboratory Medicine and
Clinical Diabetology, but also on Industry. To discuss
these changes with manufacturers of HbA1c assays,
IFCC invited companies for a meeting in December
2007. The results of this meeting will be reported later
this spring in publications in several journals.
The HbA1c issue has been one of the major topics
of Scientific Division (SD) during the year, but stand-
ardization efforts on several analytes continue (plasma
proteins, cardiac markers, thyroid tests, hCG, growth
hormone, PAPP-A, CDT etc). I am very happy that
Scandinavian countries are well represented in the SD
Committees and Working Groups.
Education is important in our field, especially in
developing countries and it is the major area of the
duties of the Education and Management Division
(EMD). Industry has recognized this and given sever-
al grants to IFCC to improve its educational activities.