The conventional intact PTH assays detect not only PTH 1-84 but also inactive fragments (as PTH 7-84) that accumulate in renal failure. There has been a recent development of a new PTH assay that measures only true 1-84 PTH (Whole PTH or CAP assay, Scantibodies). As 7-84 PTH fragment is antagonistic on bone effects of 1-84 PTH, Moniere-Faugere has suggested that 1-84/7-84 PTH ratio less than 1 is predictive of low turnover. We evaluated the usefulness of CAP assay and the 1-84/7-84 PTH ratio as markers of bone turnover in a groups of 24 patients in peritoneal dialysis (PD). Patients were classified as having low bone turn over if they had a Total PTH (similar to intact PTH) of less than 100 pg/ml. We also measured serum CrossLaps (CTX) as another serum resorption marker. Patients had a mean Whole PTH of 95.5 pg/ml and a mesan total PTH of 155.4 pg/l (range 9 to 900). Whole PTH represented 69.1% of total PTH. Fifteen patients (62.5%) had a total PTH of less than 100. These patients had a 1-84/7-84 relationship of 1.9 +/- 1.8 while 9 patients with Total PTH more than 100 had a relationship of 1.29 +/- 0.6 (p = NS). There was a tight correlation between Whole PTH and total PTH (r = 0.98; p < 0.0001) and with serum CTX (r = 0.78; p < 0.0001). We conclude that 1-84/7-84 ratio does not seem useful in the prediction of low bone turnover and that Whole PTH does not seem to be more useful than intact PTH in the prediction of bone turnover in this population. Future studies should correlate this markers with direct measurements of bone turnover in bone biopsies to demonstrate their usefulness in the prediction of the type of renal osteodystrophy.