ReviewThe Clinical biochemist. Reviews2019
Indirect Reference Intervals: Harnessing the Power of Stored Laboratory Data.
Review in The Clinical biochemist. Reviews, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Paediatric Reference Intervals and Curves for Haemoglobin Estimated Using Direct Methods: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International journal of laboratory hematology · 2025Pooled it
- Age- and Sex-Specific Reference Intervals for Amino Acids and Acylcarnitines by Tandem Mass Spectrometry in a Kazakhstani Paediatric Population: An Indirect Data-Mining Study.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Intact Parathyroid Hormone Reference Intervals: Importance of Pre-Processing for Indirect Reference Interval Estimation.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Age, sex and ethnicity changes in creatine kinase and sex- and ethnicity-specific reference intervals of creatine kinase.Clinical medicine (London, England) · 2026Article
- Vitamin D Status and Routine Laboratory Data-Derived 25(OH)D Distributional Benchmarks in Adults from Şanlıurfa, Türkiye: Age, Sex, and Seasonal Variation.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Establishing Age- and Sex-Specific Reference Intervals for Thyroid Function Tests in the Older People of Eastern Anatolia: A Population-Based Indirect Approach.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Article
- First trimester of pregnancy TSH laboratory specific reference intervals established by an indirect method.Biochemia medica · 2026Observational
- Modeling Multivariate Distributions of Lipid Panel Biomarkers for Reference Interval Estimation and Comorbidity Analysis.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Establishing next-generation reference intervals for pro-gastrin-releasing peptide using a dynamic modeling approach.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Article
- Age- and gender-specific dynamics and next-generation reference intervals for pepsinogen in northern China.World journal of gastroenterology · 2025Observational
- Haematological and biochemical reference values for Bonelli's eagles in the wild and in captivity: implications for conservation and rehabilitation programs.BMC veterinary research · 2025Article
- Article
- Feasibility of using real-world free thyroxine data from the US and Europe to enable fast and efficient transfer of reference intervals from one population to another.Practical laboratory medicine · 2024Article
- The BioRef Infrastructure, a Framework for Real-Time, Federated, Privacy-Preserving, and Personalized Reference Intervals: Design, Development, and Application.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Unsupervised machine learning method for indirect estimation of reference intervals for chronic kidney disease in the Puerto Rican population.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Neonatal reference intervals for thyroid stimulating hormone and free thyroxine assayed on a Siemens Atellica® IM analyzer: a cross sectional study.BMC endocrine disorders · 2023Article
- Utilization of five data mining algorithms combined with simplified preprocessing to establish reference intervals of thyroid-related hormones for non-elderly adults.BMC medical research methodology · 2023Article
- Indirect Method for Estimation of Reference Intervals of Inflammatory Markers.Annals of laboratory medicine · 2023Article
- The indirect method in the establishment of reference intervals for complement 3 and complement 4: A retrospective study.Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences · 2022Article
- Indirect estimation of reference intervals for thyroid parameters using advia centaur XP analyzer.Journal of medical biochemistry · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Reference intervals are relied upon by clinicians when interpreting their patients' test results. Therefore, laboratorians directly contribute to patient care when they report accurate reference intervals. The traditional approach to establishing reference intervals is to perform a study on healthy volunteers. However, the practical aspects of the staff time and cost required to perform these studies make this approach difficult for clinical laboratories to routinely use. Indirect methods for deriving reference intervals, which utilise patient results stored in the laboratory's database, provide an alternative approach that is quick and inexpensive to perform. Additionally, because large amounts of patient data can be used, the approach can provide more detailed reference interval information when multiple partitions are required, such as with different age-groups. However, if the indirect approach is to be used to derive accurate reference intervals, several considerations need to be addressed. The laboratorian must assess whether the assay and patient population were stable over the study period, whether data 'clean-up' steps should be used prior to data analysis and, often, how the distribution of values from healthy individuals should be modelled. The assumptions and potential pitfalls of the particular indirect technique chosen for data analysis also need to be considered. A comprehensive understanding of all aspects of the indirect approach to establishing reference intervals allows the laboratorian to harness the power of the data stored in their laboratory database and ensure the reference intervals they report are accurate.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.