[Comparison of the DELFIA and RIA methods for measuring luteinizing and follicle stimulating hormones in serum].

Hormonal quantitation has had important developments since Yalow and Berson created the first radioimmunoassay for insulin in 1959. Since then much research has been done to find new non-isotopic methods which offer better levels of sensitivity, specificity and precision than RIA. DELFIA (dissociation enhancement lanthanide fluoroimmunoassay) is a new alternative technology which is a specific time resolved fluoroimmunoassay (TR-FIA) which combines higher purified antigens, monoclonal antibodies in a sandwich type assay with long fluorescence decay time of lanthanide chelates as europium, samarium and terbium used as labels, and a particular time resolving fluorometer for nanoseconds measurements. As part of the validation and introduction of the DELFIA method in our laboratory we made a comparative evaluation of DELFIA and RIA in the quantification of serum luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. The data favor the DELFIA method in terms of sensitivity, specificity, volume of sample, half life of reagents, as well as the elimination of radioactive tracers.