Kinetic determination of total serum protein with a centrifugal analyzer.

The new generation of centrifugal parallel fast analyzers, such as the “CentrifiChem,” is generally thought of primarily as enzyme analyzers, because of the several attractive characteristics they possess for such assays. With them, one can make an initial reading within several seconds of starting a reaction. They therefore can also be used to determine the concentration of selected compounds, by quantitating the rate of the reactions used; alternatively, endpointor equilibrium-reaction methods can be used. The determination of serum total protein provides an interesting case in point. Determination of serum total protein with the fast analyzer was first described by Hatcher and Anderson (1). However, they did not study many samples from patients nor did they discuss the characteristics and requirements of the kinetic approach. In this paper, we demonstrate the determination of serum total protein by kinetic analysis with the CentrifiChem Fast Analyzer.