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1
Department of Clinical Biochemistry, St Bartholomew's and the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Turner Street, London E1 2AD, UK.
2
Glasgow site, Dade International, Wilmington, DE.
a Author for correspondence. Fax +44 171 377 1544; e-mail d.newman{at}mds.qmw.ac.uk
| Abstract |
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Key Words: indexing terms: calibration stability computer cooptimization
| Introduction |
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This has led to the need for reliable, rapid, and automated assays for urine albumin with good sensitivity, an interassay imprecision of <5% over the range 25250 mg/L, and good calibrator stability (9). We previously reported such an assay with particle-enhanced immunoturbidimetry (11); however, one additional characteristic a urine albumin assay requires is a very wide working range. Urine albumin concentrations range from 5 mg/L in healthy individuals to up to 5 g/L in patients with nephrotic syndrome. Direct immunoaggregation assays could give falsely low values at these high concentrations, because of antigen excess. This led us to devise a new method with particle-enhanced turbidimetric inhibition, where antigen excess would not be a problem but good assay imprecision at the upper limit of the reference range could be achieved.
Such an assay also enables the use of a urine albumin method in clinical conditions other than diabetic nephropathy, where it can be used to replace the measurement of urine total protein. The immunochemical measurement of the predominant urinary protein offers improved analytical and potentially clinical sensitivity and specificity and would be useful in monitoring such conditions as hypertension and preeclampsia (12)(13).
We report the development of a sensitive and reliable method for urine albumin measurement on the Dade aca® that has excellent calibration and reagent stability and no problems caused by antigen excess.
| Materials and Methods |
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Protocol for latex particles/human serum albumin (HSA)
reagent synthesis.
The 40-nm latex particles, which contained a
polyvinyl naphthalene core with a chemically reactive shell of
chloromethylstyrene (CMST), were provided by Dade International
(14). Particles were covalently coupled to HSA (code ORHA
20/21; Behring Diagnostics, Milton Keynes, UK) to give a final
concentration of 1 g/L HSA to 20 g/L particles in coupling buffer
containing 15 mmol/L sodium phosphate buffer, pH 7.4, with 0.5 mL/L
Gafac RE610 surfactant (Gafac Corp., Wythenshaw, Manchester, UK). After
an overnight incubation in a shaker/incubator, with constant shaking at
37 °C and 240 rpm, the reagent was sonicated with an MSE Soniprep
150 (Fisons, UK) and stored at 4 °C, ready to use. We performed no
centrifugation or washing procedures.
Coupling reproducibility.
Five separate syntheses of
albumin particle reagent were performed with one lot of albumin and one
lot of particle raw material, and calibration curves run with the
chosen method protocol; the imprecision of the signal at each
calibrator point was <5%. We also assessed the effect of different
lots of raw particle material; good between-lot agreement was shown
(<5% variation in signal).
Calibrators.
We prepared a series of five calibrators
from 1000 mg/L HSA dissolved in 9 g/L sodium chloride containing 0.01
g/L Brij 35 and 0.1 g/L sodium azide. We then diluted the stock in the
same saline/Brij solution to give calibrators of 5, 25, 50, 100, and
200 mg/L together with a zero value.
Antibody.
We generated the monoclonal antibody by
immunizing mice with purified HSA. The clones were grown in ascites,
which was concentrated and dialyzed against PBS, pH 7.4, containing 0.1
g/L thimerosal, and protein A purified (provided by Pallaiah Thammana,
Dade International, Glasgow, DE).
| Experimental Procedures and Results |
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A final reagent optimization was done with the BBN/Catalyst computer-assisted cooptimization experimental design (BBN Software Product; Cambridge, MA) on the basis of the work of Rautela et al. (17) describing a response surface approach to simultaneous optimization of multiple interdependent variables. In the BoxBehnken approach, with four variables (identified above), the model includes a range of each variable, with a total of six samplesin this case calibrators at 0, 5, 200, and 300 mg/L albumin, a normal urine, and a normal urine supplemented with the equivalent of 40 mg/L HSA. The range of each of the variables studied was 1936 µg of antibody per reaction pack, 3045 µL of particle reagent per pack, 03% of PEG 8000, and 50250 µL sample volume.
The screen presentation of data provided plots of absorbance change against the concentration of variable for several combinations of the samples, most attention focusing on the normal urine and zero calibrator (for potential nonspecific effects), the 05 mg/L difference (for the sensitivity at low analyte concentration), and 0300 mg/L difference (for the range of the assay). Each set of raw absorbance data plotted against the variable yielded two lines based on least-squares regression, one reflecting the most positive effect, the other the most negative effect. If the slopes of the two lines were the same, i.e., parallel lines, the variable in question did not interact with the other; nonparallel lines indicated interaction. Our objective was to choose conditions in which the slope was the same for both maximum and minimum effect and the influence small, i.e., a change in the variable did not greatly influence the absorbance change.
The results are illustrated in simplified form for the 05 mg/L and
0300 mg/L absorbance differences in Fig. 1
; PEG concentration has the major influence on both the
sensitivity at low concentration and the assay range parameters. The
particle volume and sample volume variables had little influence on the
assay range parameter, i.e., 0300 mg/L absorbance difference.
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Final chosen protocol.
We added an aliquot of 100 µL
of sample with 4.9 mL of phosphate buffer and a single PEG tablet (15
g/L final concentration) to 45 µL of HSA/particle reagent (1 g/L + 20
g/L CMST particle). The reaction was initiated with the addition of 20
µg of monoclonal antibody (dissolved in PBS, pH 7.4) and turbidity
monitored at 340 nm. These were the final parameters chosen as a
consequence of linear and cooptimization experimental results.
Imprecision.
Three pools of urine with different
concentrations of albumin were prepared, aliquoted, and stored at
-20 °C to provide the quality-control materials for this study.
Intraassay imprecision was assessed by running 20 replicates of each
sample pool randomized in a single analytical run. Interassay
imprecision was assessed by running one aliquot of each of the pools,
thawed on the day of analysis, over 1 month. The data are shown in
Table 1
. A precision profile established from the duplicate analysis of
samples used as part of the method comparison is shown in Fig. 2
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Detection limit.
The detection limit, defined as 2.5
times the SD of the blank response, assessed by analyzing 20 replicates
of the zero calibrator, was 0.4 mg/L.
Parallelism study.
Urine specimens from 10 patients with
albumin concentrations of up to 300 mg/L were serially diluted (five
dilutions) in a solution containing 9 g/L NaCl and 0.01 g/L Brij 35 and
analyzed by the proposed method. The results obtained were compared
with the expected results by linear regression and showed a slope of
1.019 with regression coefficient of 0.997.
Analytical recovery.
We added albumin concentrations of
50 mg/L and 100 mg/L to 10 normal urine specimens and analyzed them on
the aca with the established protocol. The mean analytical
recovery was 104% with a range of 94112%.
Method comparison.
We analyzed 145 urine samples from
patients for albumin content by the Beckman Array nephelometric
immunoassay system (18) and by our proposed method. We
chose samples from patients with a range of clinical conditions to give
a distribution of albumin of 0250 mg/L, and regression statistics
calculated according to the method of Deming (19) gave
aca = 0.87 x Beckman + 8.5, r =
0.995, n = 145 (see Fig. 3
).
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Calibrator crossover.
The aca calibrators
were analyzed by the Beckman method and yielded a value equivalent to
80% of the stated value.
Interferences.
We assessed the possibility that high
concentrations of urea might interfere with the immunoreaction by
supplementing five normal urine samples with urea up to a final
concentration of 1 mol/L; no effect was found. Because bovine serum
albumin (BSA) is present in many commercial calibrants and
quality-control materials, we also checked the effect of cross-reaction
from BSA in the assay; a cross-reactivity of <0.1% was found at 200
mg/L BSA.
Calibration curve stability.
We assessed the stability
of the calibrators by constructing a calibration curve according to the
manufacturers' instructions on day 1 and then measuring the calibrants
as samples on subsequent days for 60 days. Over the whole study the
calculated result for each of the calibrators remained within 5% of
the assigned value.
Reference range.
We collected 24-h urine samples from 27
healthy laboratory workers to confirm that the analytical results for
our proposed method were within the published span of reference values
for urine albumin. The samples gave a mean value of 5.6 mg/L with a
range of 0.516.2 mg/L, well within the reported limits
(20).
| Discussion |
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The method described in this paper achieved the desired performance with the benefit of three key features. The choice of the inhibition format provides good sensitivity at the low analyte concentration with an avoidance of antigen excess possibilities, while the covalent coupling of albumin to the particles ensures that the particle reagent is stable; this characteristic has been demonstrated for other immunoassays where covalent coupling of protein was used (22)(23)(24). Finally, the use of a unitized dose assay system such as the aca with highly reproducible reagent preparation also contributes to the long-term reproducibility of the assay. This is a particularly important feature when used as a regular screening test. We used both linear and multiple parameter cooptimization to achieve these aims. Although cooptimization is not generally used by researchers, we found it to be a useful adjunct to the linear process rather than a replacement. The data could also be useful as a guide to manufacturing tolerances for pack assembly.
The method described demonstrates an interassay CV of <10%, well within the reference range, the precision profile (25) indicating a useful assay range of 5250 mg/L (the top calibration point). This figure is well within the acceptable concentration defined by Rowe et al. (20), and defined by attaining imprecision equal to, or less than, half of the intraindividual biological variation (26). A doubling of albumin excretion within the reference range can easily be detected with this method. Establishment of a pathologically significant increase in albumin excretion is much harder to define because of the enormous variations in albumin excretion. Protocols have been suggested for this, usually requiring 23 collections over 612 months, giving an increase above a cutoff concentration ~2030 mg/min or 30 mg/L or 3 mg/mmol creatinine (12). An assay with good imprecision within the reference range and long-term reagent and therefore calibration stability would be invaluable in the long-term monitoring of diabetics (27)(28).
The method demonstrates good recovery of albumin and comparability with an established method. Furthermore, this method offers the security of avoidance of the risks of antigen excess by use of the inhibition format. It can also be used as an alternative to a total protein method with appropriate dilution of sample for accurate quantification of high concentrations of albumin excretion, as in the case of established nephrotic syndrome (12).
| Acknowledgments |
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| Footnotes |
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| References |
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The following articles in journals at HighWire Press have cited this article:
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Q.-P. Qin, O. Peltola, and K. Pettersson Time-resolved Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer Assay for Point-of-Care Testing of Urinary Albumin Clin. Chem., July 1, 2003; 49(7): 1105 - 1113. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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S. Guaita, J. M. Simo, N. Ferre, J. Joven, and J. Camps Evaluation of a Particle-enhanced Turbidimetric Immunoassay for the Measurement of Immunoglobulin E in an ILab 900 Analyzer Clin. Chem., September 1, 1999; 45(9): 1557 - 1561. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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M. P. Parsons, D. J. Newman, R. G. Newall, and C. P. Price Validation of a Point-of-Care Assay for the Urinary Albumin:Creatinine Ratio Clin. Chem., March 1, 1999; 45(3): 414 - 417. [Full Text] [PDF] |
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