Enzyme-coupled ultraviolet determination of alpha-amylase activity with the GEMSAEC centrifugal analyzer.

We evaluated the Harleco alpha-glucosidase/hexokinase/glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase-coupled alpha-amylase method, bu use of the GEMSAEC centrifugal analyzer. Performance evaluation included kinetic studies of substrate and maltose hydrolysis as well as effects of endogenous glucose and fructose. The reagent was found to give a linear response with alpha-amylase activity to greater than 1200 U/liter. Within-run precision resulted in coefficients of variation (CV) of 0.9 to 3.2% over the range studied. Day-to-day precision corresponded to CV's of 2.4 to 4.4% over the same range of alpha-amylase procedure was found to be good (r = 0.997) for patients' sera examined.