Cryoactivation was known to occur in whole blood and plasma samples when kept between +4 and -5°C leading to falsely high renin concentrations. In 2022 it has been clearly shown that cryoactivation can also occur in samples stored at -20°C.Based on these new findings here we discuss how this can influence the clinical diagnosis of patients. First, we show that storage of renin plasma samples can affect the renin measurements and thereby the aldosterone-to-renin ratio (ARR) calculation, which might explain the high intra-individual variability in ARR also recently demonstrated. Second, we discuss the existing studies on the establishment of renin reference intervals and noted the lack of attention given to this recently revealed preanalytical conditions. Our literature review of the reference intervals for renin suggest that cryoactivation might have influence the published data.
Keywords: Renin; aldosterone; cryoactivation; hypertension; laboratory; pre-analysis.
© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Endocrine Society.