Determination of pancreatic lipase by immunoactivation technology. A rapid test system with high sensitivity and specificity.

This paper describes the test characteristics and clinical relevance of a newly developed homogeneous enzyme immunoassay IMAC lipase test for the determination of serum pancreatic lipase. The method of determination is based on an immunoactivation technology and utilizes antibody fragments against human pancreatic lipase covalently bound to the marker enzyme horseradish peroxidase. The serum samples of 408 persons were investigated with this new assay. The within-run and day-to-day precision, the linearity, and the recovery of this immunoassay correspond to a very high degree to the requirements made of a modern immunological test. Comparison with an ELISA method resulted in a correlation coefficient of 0.971, whereby the IMAC lipase assay tended to register lower serum values. The serum range for the IMAC lipase test is 0-47 micrograms/L, based on a normal collective of 187 healthy controls. A sensitivity of 95.8% for the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis at a cutoff level of twice the upper normal range and a specificity of 99.3% at an efficiency of 99.8% can be given. The advantage of the IMAC lipase test method is its ability to be adapted to work on automatic laboratory analyzers.