Interaction of immobilized anti-salivary amylase antibody with human macroamylases: implications for use in a pancreatic amylase assay to distinguish macroamylasemia from acute pancreatitis.

We examined the ability of an immobilized antibody to salivary amylase (Clin Chem 1985;33:1283-8) to react with amylase in macroamylasemic sera. The antibody removed 50% (SD 23%) of the total amylase activity from 39 macroamylase sera, a percentage indistinguishable (P greater than 0.75) from the percentage removed from concurrently analyzed sera from healthy volunteers (49%, SD 11%). Electrophoretic analysis of 23 macroamylasemic sera revealed that the antibody removed only part of the macroamylase band(s) in 71% of the cases. We conclude that the mean isoenzyme composition of the macroamylase complexes is essentially identical to the mean isoenzyme distribution in normal sera (i.e., about half salivary and half pancreatic amylase). Further, the immobilized antibody can be used to distinguish most patients with macroamylasemia from those with acute pancreatitis, because sera from the latter contain an increased proportion (greater than 80%) of pancreatic amylase.