Abaxis releases new Piccolo reagent disc panel

Abaxis, Inc. (Nasdaq: ABAX), a medical products company manufacturing point-of-care blood analysis systems, today announced the release of a new Piccolo® reagent disc panel called BioChemistry Panel Plus. This new reagent disc will be used by healthcare professionals in conjunction with the Piccolo Xpress™ point-of-care analyzer. As a result of this new panel configuration, U.S. healthcare professionals can now conduct on-site chemistry analysis in less than 12 minutes for general inflammation and infection in combination with comprehensive liver and kidney function diagnostics.

The new BioChemistry Panel Plus contains the C-Reactive Protein (CRP) assay that received 510(k) clearance in late January 2010.   In addition to CRP, the BioChemistry Panel Plus contains the following test configuration: ALB, ALP, ALT, AMY, AST, BUN, Ca, CRE, GGT, GLU, TP, UA. This configuration encompasses a broad spectrum of internal organ diagnostics including liver, kidney, pancreas and metabolic functions.

The BioChemistry Panel Plus is likely to be useful for practices that are interested in the detection, monitoring and treatment of diseases with inflammation or infection disorders. The new panel may also have broad applications in the European and Asia Pacific markets, where CRP is widely used as a standard test in general health screenings and as part of routine clinical practice.

"The addition of the new BioChemistry Panel Plus is a testament to our commitment to continued innovation in medical diagnostics," said Clint Severson, chairman and chief executive officer of Abaxis, Inc. "We look forward to continuing to raise the bar on diagnostic technologies that allow physicians to better care for their patients, improve the efficiencies of their practices and reduce the overall cost of healthcare, while increasing individual practice profitability."

With the Piccolo delivering lab-accurate blood chemistry results on-site in minutes, physicians can make confident treatment decisions while the patient is in their office, thereby increasing the speed and quality of care while reducing the unreimbursed time spent preparing labs and relaying patient results.  The capability to diagnose and treat in one visit can have a dramatic impact on practice throughput.  Clinics can see more patients each day by eliminating unnecessary call-backs and follow up visits due to standard 24-hour lab turnaround.  And, by having immediate results while they're in front of the physician, patients can experience the real impact of their compliance or non-compliance to treatment regimens, which can improve outcomes and reduce hospitalizations.