NIST Micronutrients Measurement Quality Assurance Program: Characterizing the Measurement Community's Performance over Time

摘要

The Micronutrients Measurement Quality Assurance Pro-gram (M2QAP) at the National Institute of StandaMs and Technology was created in 1984 with the goal of improv-ing among-participant measurement comparability for fat-soluble vitamin-related compounds in human serum. We recently described improved tools for evaluating compari-son exercise data; we here extend and apply these tools to the evaluation of the measurement community’s per-formance over the entire 15-year history of the M2QAP. We here display measurement performance characteris-tics for the 14 measurands most commonly reported by the M2QAP community. We confirm that among-partici-pant comparability for total fl-carotene cannot be much improved without improving average long-term within-participant measurement stability. We demonstrate that improved rneasurand definition and/or identification of interferences may help participants improve comparability for many of the M2QAP’s other commonly reported measurands. The reported measurement pel*mnance characteristics may be of interest to clinical, matritiomal, and epidemiological studies involving iniy dthcse mea-surands. The data analysis techniques ~l~l may be applicable to other praeams.