Interferences immunoassays

The advantages of homogenous immunoassays are simple formats and rapid data output producing user-friendly and cost-effective products. Technical challenges to consider, however, are the necessity to remove or minimize background interference from the reagents and nonspecific binding reactions. 

The main advantage of a homogeneous immunoassay, compared to a heterogeneous immunoassay, is the absence of a separation step. This translates into a simpler procedure and easier automation. However, homogeneous assays are typically less sensitive and more susceptible to sample interferences which are removed in a separation step. 

Sample preparation techniques vary depending on the analyte and the matrix. An advantage of immunoassays is that less sample preparation is often needed prior to analysis. Because the ELISA is conducted in an aqueous system, aqueous samples such as groundwater may be analyzed directly in the immunoassay or following dilution in a buffer solution. For soil, plant material or complex water samples (e.g., sewage effluent), the analyte must be extracted from the matrix. The extraction method must meet performance criteria such as recovery, reproducibility and ruggedness, and ultimately the analyte must be in a solution that is aqueous or in a water-miscible solvent. For chemical analytes such as pesticides, a simple extraction with methanol may be suitable. At the other extreme, multiple extractions, column cleanup and finally solvent exchange may be necessary to extract the analyte into a solution that is free of matrix interference. 

Unlike GC/MS methods, internai standards are not appropriate for immunoassays. Internal standards that would react with the antibody but would not interfere with the assay are nonexistent. In the place of internal standards, external QC must be maintained. 

The analytical response generated by an immunoassay is caused by the interaction of the analyte with the antibody. Although immunoassays have greater specificity than many other analytical procedures, they are also subject to significant interference problems. Interference is defined as any alteration in the assay signal different from the signal produced by the assay under standard conditions. Specific (cross-reactivity) and nonspecific (matrix) interferences may be major sources of immunoassay error and should be controlled to the greatest extent possible. Because of their different impacts on analyses, different approaches to minimize matrix effects and antibody cross-reactivity will be discussed separately. 

Specific extraction methods are used to prepare the analyte for immunoassay by freeing the analyte fromboth specific and nonspecific interferences. Supercritical fluid extraction has been used to decrease the amount of solvent waste generated. Solid-phase extraction has gained popularity, and many different supports are available. One promising extraction and concentration method is immunoaffinity chromatography, which will be addressed later. 

Beasley et al. developed a panel of immunoassays to monitor DDT, its metabolites, and structurally related compounds, but they found that milk has a severe effect on the assay performance. They found that when directly utilizing whole milk, color development was completely inhibited. Even when using 1 100 dilutions of whole milk, the assay sensitivity was reduced by 90% (based on the IC50 shift, not simply the dilution factor). A number of procedures were evaluated to eliminate the interferences from the fat-soluble analytes. However, many of the procedures that removed interferences also removed the analytes. Extraction with a mixture of solvents and the use of similarly processed blank milk to prepare the standards ultimately yielded more accurate results. This article demonstrates the difficulties encountered in analyzing lipid-soluble analytes. 

Third, the bulk of the items in Table 1 address method performance. These requirements must be satisfied on a substrate-by-substrate basis to address substrate-specific interferences. As discussed above, interferences are best dealt with by application of conventional sample preparation techniques use of blank substrate to account for background interferences is not permitted. The analyst must establish a limit of detection (LOD), the lowest standard concentration that yields a signal that can be differentiated from background, and an LOQ (the reader is referred to Brady for a discussion of different techniques used to determine the LOD for immunoassays). For example, analysis of a variety of corn fractions requires the generation of LOD and LOQ data for each fraction. Procedural recoveries must accompany each analytical set and be based on fresh fortification of substrate prior to extraction. Recovery samples serve to confirm that the extraction and cleanup procedures were conducted correctly for all samples in each set of analyses. Carrying control substrate through the analytical procedure is good practice if practicable. 

The determination of theophylline in plasma can also be accomplished by various immunoassay techniques.66-67 Theophylline was also determined by a polarization fluoroimmunoassays but found to have a caffeine interference.88. In a more research oriented application, the interaction of caffeine with L-tryptophan was studied using h NMR with the results indicating that caffeine interacted with tryptophan in a 1 1 molar ratio through parallel stacking.69... 

Tibi, L. and Burnett, D., Interference by caffeine in polarization immunoassays for theophylline, Ann. Clin. Biochem., 291 1994. 

Lanthanides also have potential as DEFRET energy donors. Selvin et al. have reported the use of carbostyril-124 complexes (53) with europium and terbium as sensitizers for cyanine dyes (e.g., (54)) in a variety of immunoassays and DNA hybridization assays.138-140 The advantage of this is that the long lifetime of the lanthanide excited state means than it can transfer its excitation energy to the acceptor over a long distance (up to 100 A) sensitized emission from the acceptor, which occurs at a wavelength where there is minimal interference from residual lanthanide emission, is then measured. 

There are mainly three types of transducers used in immunosensors electrochemical, optical, and microgravimetric transducers. The immunosensors may operate either as direct immunosensors or as indirect ones. For direct immunosensors, the transducers directly detect the physical or chemical effects resulting from the immunocomplex formation at the interfaces, with no additional labels used. The direct immunosensors detect the analytes in real time. For indirect immunosensors, one or multiple labeled bio-reagents are commonly used during the detection processes, and the transducers should detect the signals from the labels. These indirect detections used to need several washing and separation steps and are sometimes called immunoassays. Compared with the direct immunosensors, the indirect immunosensors may have higher sensitivity and better ability to defend interference from non-specific adsorption. 

The upshot of these points is that it may not be practical to follow established guidelines for ADME evaluation. Binding proteins, immunoreactive metabolites and antibodies could interfere with the immunoassays used to measure the activity of biotechnologically derived pharmaceuticals. The link between immunoreactivity and... 

Johnson and Van Emon [57] have described a quantitative enzyme based immunoassay procedure for the determination of polychlorinated biphenyls in soils and sediments and compared the results with those obtained by a gas chromatographic method. The soil is extracted with methanol, or Soxhlet extracted or extracted with a supercritical fluid. In the case of the latter two extractants good agreement was obtained between immunoassay and gas chromatographic methods. Spiking recoveries from soil achieved ranged from 104% (Aroclor 1248) to 107% (Aroclor 1242). Detection limits were 9pg kg-1 (Aroclor 1245) and 10.5pg kg-1 (Aroclor 1242). Chlorinated anisoles, benzenes or phenols did not interfere. 

Since FPIAs are conducted as homogeneous immunoassays, they are susceptible to effects from endogenous fluorophores and from intersample variations. Such problems and others due to the sample matrix are largely avoided by sample dilutions of several hundredfold. Low-affinity, nonspecific binding of tracers to sample proteins, when present in sufficiently high concentrations, can result in a falsely elevated polarization signal. Interference from sample proteins can be eliminated when warranted, by proteolytic hydrolysis with pepsin.(46)... 

Time-resolved approaches for multi-analyte immunoassays have been described recently. Simultaneous determination of LH, follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), hCG, and prolactin (PRL) in a multisite manual strip format has been reported. 88 Four microtiter wells are attached to a plastic strip, two-by-two and back-to-back, such that the wells can be read on a microtiter plate reader. In a quadruple-label format, the simultaneous quantitative determination of four analytes in dried blood spots can be done using europium, samarium, dysprosium, and terbium. 89 In this approach, thyroid-stimulating hormone, 17-a-hydroxyprogesterone, immunoreactive trypsin, and creatine kinase MM (CK-MM) isoenzyme are determined from dried blood samples spotted on filter paper in a microtiter well coated with a mixture of antibodies. Dissociative fluorescence enhancement of the four ions using cofluorescence-based enhancement solutions enables the time-resolved fluorescence of each ion to be measured through four narrow-band interference filters. 

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