preparation of prostate specific antigen standards for immunoradiometric assay

background: immunoradiometric assay is one of the most common and precise methods for determination of prostate specific antigen (psa) in clinical laboratories. usual use of human serum in routine assays has many disadvantages such as easy contamination and precipitation, instability and unavailability. thus in order to avoid these problems the artificial matrix was used which acts similar to human serum. materials and methods: in order to design immunoradiometric assay for prostate specific antigen, series of standards in different concentrations were needed for special artificial matrix preparation. the influence of artificial matrix in standards was studied to determine prostate specific antigen in comparison with human serum. some different factors, such as the amount of non-specific bonding (nsb), precision, and accuracy, conditions of storage and stability of these standards prepared by artificial matrix were investigated. results: the most appropriate artificial matrix (tris-glycine (25.0 mmol/l) + nacl (75.0 mmol/l) + tris (12.5 mmol/l) +triton x- 100 (0.5 ml/l) + hsa (1.2 g/l) + urea (0.5 mol/l)) for preparing the standards was selected in comparison with human serum (hsa) and a commercial kit standards. hsa and urea concentration have more critical influences on the properties of the standards. the amount of nsb of the selected matrix was the lowest one, so the selected matrix was the most suitable for preparing the standards. the results show the optimum condition of storage duration of our standards for one year was in refrigerator (2-8°c). it was observed that preparation of standards with selected matrix had acceptable accuracy and precision. conclusion: according to the results, standards which were prepared with this matrix had suitable and appropriate properties and it could be utilized to prepare psa standards in immunoradiometric assay. iran. j. radiat. res., 2008 6 (1): 51-58