Concentration and content

One of the more frequent activities in health sciences is the measurement of biological quantities. Frequently, when reading biomedical books and journals some confusion on the metrological meaning of biological quantities related to the concepts ‘concentration’ and ‘content’ may be observed. Classically, a concentration is an amount of any type per volume of liquid or gas system, whereas content is an amount of any type per mass of liquid or gas or solid system. However the concepts ‘concentration’ and ‘content’ alone are still ambiguous because, depending on the type of amount of the component (analyte) per volume or mass of a system, there are different types of concentrations and contents. This article attempts to give a clarification of these concepts, mainly based on international recommendations about nomenclature and terminology of metrology, chemistry and clinical laboratory sciences.