A turbidimetric immunochemical method for determination of serum beta 2-microglobulin using a centrifugal analyzer.

A turbidimetric immunochemical method has been developed for quantitation of serum-beta 2-microglobulin. The serum samples are pre-treated with polyethyleneglycol to decrease the background turbidity and a centrifugal analyzer is used for the absorbance measurements. The within-assay coefficient of variation was 4.6% when 58 serum samples with a mean value of 2.0 mg/l were analyzed in duplicate. The sensitivity of the method is below 0.5 mg/l. When serum samples were analyzed by both the turbidimetric method and a radioimmunoassay a correlation coefficient of 0.989 was obtained. The turbidimetric method is simple, cheap and has a high capacity which makes it suitable for routine determinations of serum beta 2-microglobulin in a clinical laboratory.