London King’s College Hospital Trace Element Laboratory

The Trace Elements laboratory at Kings’ College Hospital provides specialist assay and interpretation service for a range of essential, non-essential and toxic elements in serum/plasma, whole blood, urine, tissues and esoteric matrices.

The laboratory is one of only 7 Supra-Regional Assay Service (SAS) Trace Element laboratories in the UK (http://www.sas-centre.org/centres/trace-elements/london-kings). State-of-the-art Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS), is used for analyses.

The reliability of the data, is monitored by regular analysis of a range of commercially available and in-house quality control samples. We actively participate in various external quality assessment schemes including United Kingdom National External Quality Scheme (UK NEQAS) and RIQAS (TE scheme). The laboratory is also approved by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) for the occupational monitoring of lead and cadmium.

Our department is UKAS accredited (medical laboratory no. 9067) and has a major interest in metal metabolism, and in particular iron and copper metabolism. We have close links with the Institute of Liver Studies, and have ongoing collaborative studies on metal metabolism in patients with genetic disorders such as Haemochromatosis and Wilson Disease.

Laboratory Director: Dr Kishor Raja, Consultant Clinical Scientist, Integrated Toxicology Unit

Deputy Director:

Website: http://www.viapath.co.uk/

Trace Elements Laboratory
1st Floor Bessemer Wing

Department of Clinical Biochemistry
King’s College Hospital
Denmark Hill
LONDON
SE5 9RS

Tel: +44 (0)20 3299 4127
Fax: +44 (0)20 3737 3140