Are blood tests affected by postal delay

[AS14]

Hi

I hope someone can answer my question please.

If a finger prick iron blood test is delayed in the post can it affect results ?.

I sent it Monday morning but it was delayed at local sorting office until yesterday and didnt arrive at lab until last night.

It wasn’t tested until today.

I expected the test to of been unusable but it was tested and the results are very odd

[SeasideSusie Remembering]

AS14

This is the reason it's often recommended on here to not rely on the Tracked24 return envelopes included in the kit but to pay extra to return via Royal Mail's Special Delivery Guaranteed Next Day by 1pm. There are no guarantees with normal post or Tracked 24 or Tracked 48.

If no heatwave where you or the lab are then the blood shouldn't have deteriorated to any major extent, even NHS labs keep blood for 7 days in case further testing is requested but that would, of course, be under ideal conditions.

In what way are the results odd?

[AS14 in reply to SeasideSusie]

I use Medichecks and they usually use County labs but after some strange results I asked them use the Doctors lab this time. Ive been working on lowering high ferritin and crp for 18 months and the general trend was both were lowering as Id hoped. However last time when done at County labs ( 6 weeks ago), the ferritin shot back up . No increase in crp.

Serum iron averaged around 40%.

To try and understand what happened to explain the sudden increase in ferritin I asked that testing be done at the Doctors lab instead of County labs this time.

There are several people on the forum who also had strange ferritin results when testing was done at County labs so another reason why I thought best to check for myself.

Todays results which were done at the Doctors lab show a decrease in ferritin of 20 from six weeks ago but serum iron is now 100%. I couldnt normally get serum iron that high if I ate lots of iron rich foods, which I definetely haven’t .

My diet has been the same the entire time, no fortified foods, no red meat or any high iron foods, Ive deliberately kept iron low. I dont take vitamin c either. No new medications, supplements literally nothing is different.

I changed labs to try and work out what was going on with ferritin but then to see a huge jump in serum iron in six weeks is thoroughly confusing.

Apart from changing labs the only thing different is the length of time it took to get to the lab.

I am hundreds of miles from the lab but even so its usually there by the next morning, this is the first time its taken do long.

Something isnt right.

Brain fog is bad so I hope Ive not been confusing.

[AS14 in reply to SeasideSusie]

Thank you, in future I’ll use the delivery option you recommend.

Sorry for the late reply