Estimate of Biological Variation of Laboratory Analytes Based on the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

Laboratory analytes for individuals are subject to several sources of variation, including biological variation, preanalytical variation (specimen collection), analytical variation (bias and imprecision), and postanalytical variation (reporting of results). Biological variation consists of within-person (WP) and between-person (BP) variation. These components of biological variation are used to set analytical quality specifications for bias and...