We Stability of Busulfan in Frozen Plasma and Whole

(data not shown). Given the occurrence of false positives in cases such as hepatitis where oligoclonal banding is common, interpretation of the result together with other clinical data is important. Increased BJP indicates a poor prognosis and aggravation of monoclonal gammopathies. The quantification of urinary BJP is important for observing the course and evaluating treatment effects. In patients, the urinary total protein concentration varies. Because low urinary total protein concentrations cannot be determined precisely, the BJP concentration cannot be calculated by multiplying the amount of total protein by the percentage of the BJP band. When we used k or l solutions as calibrators for semiquantification of BJP, their electrophoretic patterns were smeared. In this study, therefore, we used albumin as a calibrator, for which the electrophoretic pattern was a single sharp band. The calibration curve based on albumin calibrators has been shown to be acceptably linear. More accurate quantification is possible in overflow-type urine samples, which show a high correlation between the values obtained by our semiquantitative method and that obtained by immunonephelometry. However, for electrophoretic images of urine samples containing high amounts of protein, a decrease in the quantification accuracy must also be taken into consideration. In the recent study by Levinson (18 ), BJP concentrations were expressed as semiquantitative values based on data obtained by UPE and IFE. If the results obtained by our method are also considered to be semiquantitative rather than quantitative, our method may be useful for observing and evaluating the clinical course of monoclonal gammopathies.