Clinical Chemistry, Vol 10, 1066-1077, Copyright © 1964 by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry

Effects of Age and Sex on the Electrophoretic Fractions of the Serum Glycoprotein

¹ Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. (Requests for reprints should be sent to this address.)
² 427 Regent Street, London, Ontario, Canada.
³ Department of Pathological Chemistry, Faculty of Medicine University of Western Ontario, and Meek Memorial Laboratory, Victoria Hospital, London, Canada.
⁴ Wm. S. Merrell Co., Box 158, Weston, Ontario, Canada.

Specimens of serum were collected from 198 clinically healthy persons, chosen to provide approximately 10 males and 10 females in each decade up to the tenth. After electrophoretic separation using the Spinco method B, the strips were stained by the periodic acid-Schiff reaction according to Köiw and Grönwall (Scand. J. Clin. Lab. Invest. 4, 244, 1952) and scanned on the Analytrol integrating densitometer at 550 mµ. Total glycoprotein was estimated on an ethanol precipitate by the tryptophan-borosulfuric acid reaction (Badin, Jackson, and Schubert, Proc. Soc. Exptl. Biol. Med. 84, 288, 1953).

The analytical error and normal values for the method were estimated; those for males did not differ from those for females. The means and standard deviations for groups showing statistically significant differences (P <0.05) were, in mg./100 ml. of serum: total, under 70 years, 148 ± 19; total, over 70 years, 164 ± 20; albumin, 23.1 ± 6.6; alpha₁, 12.5 ± 4.3; alpha₂, under 60 years, 47.4 ± 12.1; alpha₂, over 60 years,59.1 ± 16.0; beta, under 10 years, 27.2 ± 6.6; beta, 10 to 90 years, 38.4 ± 8.2; beta, over90 years,54.0 ± 17.7; gamma,26.4 ± 7.1. The results were compared with those obtained by other published procedures.