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. 2024 Sep:295:111665.
doi: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2024.111665. Epub 2024 May 16.

Short communication: Storage time and temperature affect plasma osmolality values in field-collected blood samples

Nemo E Buchmiller  1 , Savannah J Weaver  1 , Robin E Bedard  1 , Emily N Taylor  1 , Haley A Moniz  2
Affiliations

Short communication: Storage time and temperature affect plasma osmolality values in field-collected blood samples

Nemo E Buchmiller et al. Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol. 2024 Sep.

Abstract

As climate change alters the hydric regime of many habitats, understanding the hydric physiology of animals becomes increasingly important. Plasma osmolality is a popular metric to assess an organism's hydration, but samples often need to be stored before being analyzed, under varying conditions and for different lengths of time. Previous studies on plasma storage conditions, and how they impact sample integrity, are minimal and have focused more on clinical applications than field studies. We studied the stability of osmolality values from wild rattlesnake plasma samples stored in commonly used plastic snap-cap tubes under different time (0, 2, 3, 7, 29 days) and temperature (refrigerated at 2 °C and frozen at -18 °C) treatments. We hypothesized that frozen samples would remain more stable (e.g., retain osmolality values more similar to baseline values) than refrigerated samples because freezing the plasma would reduce evaporation. We found that osmolality of samples increased over time at both temperatures, becoming significantly higher than baseline after 7 days. Contrary to our prediction, osmolality increased more in frozen samples than in refrigerated samples. We discuss possible reasons for our results, along with their implications. To obtain the most accurate plasma osmolality values, we recommend refrigerating plasma samples for as short a time as possible, 3 days or fewer, before analyzing them on an osmometer.

Keywords: Field methods; Hydration; Plasma osmolality; Storage temperature; Storage time.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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