Effect of use of gel-barrier sampling tubes on determination of some antiepileptic drugs in serum.

We evaluated the effect on drug concentration of the duration of sample storage in three different tubes for blood collection: SST (Becton Dickinson), AutoSep (Terumo), and Microvette (Sarstedt), all of which contain an inert barrier (e.g., gel) for cleaner separation of serum from coagulum during centrifugation. With two of the tubes (SST and AutoSep) we examined samples taken from patients undergoing treatment with phenobarbital, phenytoin, and carbamazepine. We found significant decrease in the drug, concentration after 24 h with the serum standing over the gel barrier in the SST tubes for phenobarbital and both the SST and AutoSep tubes for carbamazepine. Adding aqueous drug solutions or serum samples supplemented with the above drugs in therapeutic concentrations to the three types of tubes resulted in a more pronounced decrease of concentration in the SST and Auto-Sep tubes than in the Microvette tubes.