Evaluation of the optimized bioluminescent assay for the determination of total creatine kinase and creatine kinase MB activities.

A very sensitive, optimized bioluminescent assay for certain kinase and creatine kinase MB activities is tested. We evaluated reagent blanks, sensitivity, precision and compared the results with those of the spectrophotometric immunoinhibition test. The main advantage of the new method is a detection limit of less than 1 U/l which, together with a high precision (s = 0.1 at detection limit), allows determinations of the creatine kinase MB activity even in normal sera in about 20 minutes. A disadvantage of the manual procedure is that it may be necessary to include up to five pipetting steps.