Chromogranin A is an established marker for diagnosis and follow-up of treatment for neuroendocrine tumours. Despite its merits as an important diagnostic tool there are some drawbacks of chromogranin A measurements. It is known that chromogranin A levels are often elevated in patients with decreased renal function, patients with atrophic gastritis and in patients on treatment with proton pump inhibitor. These clinical parameters can sometimes impair the clinical use of chromogranin A. To circumvent this problem a test for chromogranin B has been developed. Chromogranin B has been shown to be a diagnostic tool with similar clinical use as chromogranin A and it has been shown that chromogranin B levels are not affected by either proton pump inhibitor treatment or decreased renal function. With its lower sensitivity but very high specificity chromogranin B measurements can serve as a valuable complement to chromogranin A.
The Euro Diagnostica chromogranin B kit contains reagents and instructions for the quantitative measurement of chromogranin B in plasma or serum samples. The chromogranin B concentration is measured by a competitive radioimmunoassay.
