small standard deviations of 0.11 and 0.39 pg/ml, respectively. Additional studies demonstrated that the recovery of 0.13, 0.35, 0.62, 2.7, 24, and 260 pg/ml VEGF in 10% pooled mouse EDTA plasma was 100– 120%; the average recoveries of 2, 5, and 20 pg/ml VEGF in 10% individual human serum (n 5 4, with 98–130 pg/ml endogenous VEGF) were 83, 94, and 96%, respectively. This immuno-PCR therefore ca...

A new fluorometric enzyme immunoassay for 17beta-estradiol (E2) using biotinylated estradiol (BE) as a probe ligand, is described. In this method, E2 is detected indirectly by a solid-phase avidin-biotin binding assay, in which the biotin is immobilized on a microtiter plate (biotin-plate). After the competitive reaction between E2 and BE for the anti-E2 antibody in solution, the free E2 and BE...

Influenza virus neuraminidase inhibitors (NAIs) were introduced in clinical practice in various parts of the world since 1999 but were only scarcely distributed in France. Prior to the generalization of zanamivir and oseltamivir utilization in our country, we decided to test a large panel of influenza strains to establish the baseline sensitivity of these viruses to anti-neuraminidase drugs, ba...

Several different types of assay procedure have been proposed for the quantitative determination of thiamine. In a discussion (1) of the difficulties encountered in some of the methods, it has been pointed out that calorimetric (2, 3) and fluorometric (4) methods often suffer from a lack of sufficient sensitivity or specificity. The procedure described in the present communication, while not so...

In response to the need for rapid, inexpensive, high-throughput assays for antimycobacterial drug screening, a microplate-based assay which uses Alamar blue reagent for determination of growth was evaluated. MICs of 30 antimicrobial agents against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv, M. tuberculosis H37Ra, and Mycobacterium avium were determined in the microplate Alamar blue assay (MABA) with both...

We describe a fluorometric method for screening and quantifying porphyrins in stool. A small sample of stool is extracted with concentrated HCI and is diluted 200-fold in 3 mol/L HCI before analysis. An excitation scan is done from 350 to 450 nm, monitoring emission at 603 nm. Total porphyrin is estimated at the isosbestic point for coproporphyrin and protoporphyrin (402.5 nm). Monitoring emiss...