Diagnosis of von Willebrand disease is based an antigenic assay (STA®-Liatest® VWF:Ag) and an activity assay such as the ability of platelets to agglutinate in the presence of ristocetin. VWF binding to collagen provides additional information about VWF activity as far as this binding depends mainly on the presence of high molecular weight multimers.

Asserachrom® VWF:CB (Diagnostica Stago, Cat.Nr. 00239) is a new ELISA assay to measure VWF-collagen binding. There are 2 main diagnosis applications:

• this assay can substitute favourably for multimer analysis (a time consuming technique, difficult to perform) and allows "discrimination between type 2A and type 2M" to be performed by all haemostasis laboratories(1)

• this assay can improve the reliability of von Willebrand disease detection and typing. VWF binding to collagen is measurable even at low rates (1%) and exhibits better reproducibility than techniques based on ristocetin. For these reasons, some authors advice to use the VWF-collagen binding in combination with 2 specific main tests of von Willebrand disease (antigenic and activity assays). Therefore, by adding such a test, von Willebrand disease detection would be reliable and help avoid misdiagnosis(2,3)

1. Veyradier A et al, J Thromb Haemost 2007; 5: 868-70
2. Favaloro EJ et al, Lab Hematol 2005; 11: 91-7
3. Favaloro ET et al, Semin Thromb Hemost 2006; 32: 505-13