Hello all... Thanks to the list for the abundance of replies to my question regarding cardiac puncture versus tail bleeding in mice (there are too many names to list individually). I think we had something like 100 years of cumulative experience in mouse work responding! In summary, many of the responses confirmed that blood collected by cardiac puncture is indeed more susceptible to premature clotting than that collected by retroorbital or tail bleeding, causing a loss of PBMCs and possible skewing of flow analysis data. The use of high concentrations of fresh heparin used at every point in the procedure (particularly in the needle/syringe used for puncture) was emphasized by most contributors. EDTA-based solutions are also used by several labs, although it was emphasized not to mix EDTA and heparin. Retroorbital bleeding was also recommended as an alternative method not as prone to premature clotting. And just to clarify, this procedure is used as an endpoint blood collection method (unlike tail or retroorbital bleeding). Thank again for a gratifyingly large response! Bill Telford DCS-NCI-NIH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Mar 10 2001 - 19:31:41 EST