Enzyme immunoassay of gentamicin with use of a centrifugal analyzer.

Gentamicin was determined in serum by the homogeneous enzyme immunoassay system (EMIT) adapted to the Multistat centrifugal analyzer. The standard curve can be extended to 16 mg/L; however, poor precision is obtained at concentrations greater than 10 mg/L because a small difference in change in absorbance there will produce a significant variation in gentamicin concentration. For example, the within-run precision of the method (CV) was 3.4% for a 5.0 mg/L sample (range 4.6--5.4 mg/L) and 11.1% for a 12.2 mg/L sample (range 10.4--15.4 mg/L). We recommend that all samples containing gentamicin at concentrations exceeding 10 mg/L be diluted with Tris buffer. Recovery of gentamicin added to four serum specimens averaged 102%. There is no interference from bilirubin at concentrations up to 200 mg/L or from moderately lipemic samples. Hemoglobin in serum in excess of 625 mg/L results in lower gentamicin values. Gentamicin is stable for six days in serum stored at 23, 4, or -20 degrees C. Comparison of gentamicin results by the proposed method with those by a manual EMIT procedure, and with those by a homogeneous fluorescence immunoassay method gave correlation coefficients of 0.986 and 0.947.