Development of a rapid microparticle-enhanced nephelometric immunoassay for serum myoglobin in acute myocardial infarction.

A microparticle-enhanced nephelometric immunoassay was developed for myoglobin quantitation in human serum. It uses rabbit antimyoglobin serum and hydrophilic polyacrylic microparticles covalently coated with baboon myoglobin in a competitive immunoagglutination system. The level of microparticle agglutination is assessed with a specially designed nephelometer. This sensitive (45 ng/ml of myoglobin detected in serum) and accurate (coefficients of variation from 3.0% to 8.2% in precision study and linear recovery of myoglobin in overloaded sera) immunoassay was evaluated with human sera from patients suffering from acute myocardial infarction. Myoglobin levels in patient's serum on admission appeared to be correlated with clinical and biological parameters assessed in emergency wards and later. This new, rapid, and easy microparticle-enhanced nephelometric immunoassay could thus be useful in emergency conditions for the early quantitation of serum myoglobin.