The use of a one-day luteinizing hormone assay for timing of artificial insemination in infertility patients.

A 1-day rapid assay for luteinizing hormone (RLH) was developed by combined alteration of incubation temperatures and immune-complex precipitation of a commercially available LH kit. The RLH assay, compared with the standard 3-day assay, had the following characteristics: standard curve slope values of --2.47 and --2.314; assay sensitivity of 5.5 and 3.8 mIU/ml of serum; average coefficients of variation for the standard curves of 13.6% and 14.1% and for serum controls of 10.6% and 13.1%, respectively. Two consecutive RLH assays of split samples were highly correlated (r = 0.9908; P less than 0.001), as were split aliquots measured by RLH or the 3-day assay (r = 0.993; P less than 0.001). When 52 samples from portions of 5 normal menstrual cycles were assayed in both systems, agreement was again high (r = 0.9871; P less than 0.001). Representative curves of both RLH and standard LH assays, together with other data, are presented to show the feasibility of applying this method for timing of artificial insemination.