I am presently sampling serum from patients for further processing in 6 months or more. I would like to ascertain the ideal tube for storage of these samples to avoid contamination, leakage, errors or any other mishap. Can anyone be of help please?
We are storing plasma samples (after separatoin from whole blood) in classical 15 ml polypropylene tubes at -80 for years or 1.5 ml eppendorf tubes or as well in cryovials. With regards to the serum antibodies we haven't observed any negative effects from prolonged incubation at very low temperatures or at 4C in these tubes. For many applications you may want to make sure you use serum (defibrinated the plasma) as otherwise the undiluted plasma will tend to solidify in contact with certains plastic types.