Comparison of commercial kits to measure cytokine responses to Plasmodium falciparum by multiplex microsphere suspension array technology

Table 4 Comparison of the Bio-Rad and Invitrogen kits.

Cytokine	Number of positive observations	Spearman's Rho	GM (pg/ml) Invitrogen	GM (pg/ml) Bio-Rad	% difference in GM (95% CI)	Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test P value
IL-1β	17	0.6348**	185.86	48.51	283 (174, 436)	0.0004
IL-6	7	0.9286**	408.19	316.03	29 (-3, 73)	0.0008
TNF	9	-0.4017^NS	52.02	76.48	32 (-60,15)	0.09

Number of positive observation concordant between both assays with the Spearman's Rho to test for significant correlations between the assays. **= Spearman's Rho test with significance of P =< 0.01, * = Spearman's Rho test with significance of P =< 0.05, ^NS = Spearman's Rho test which in non-significant. Geometric means (GM) of both assays with the % difference in the geometric means. The table also shows Wilcoxon Rank Sum Significant differences in the quantity of cytokine detected in samples between the Bio-Rad and Invitrogen assays. GM = geometric mean.

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