Three methods of capillary electrophoresis compared with high-resolution agarose gel electrophoresis for serum protein electrophoresis.

We assessed the BioFocus 2000 capillary electrophoresis instrument for use in a routine clinical laboratory. We examined 210 serum samples received for serum protein electrophoresis by four methods: (1) The Bio-Rad HR015EC high-resolution serum protein kit on the BioFocus; (2) the Jenkins-Guerin (JG) method on the Applied Biosystems 270A HT Capillary Electrophoresis System (JG-ABI); (3) the Jenkins-Guerin method using the BioFocus (JG-BF); and (4) the quantitation of monoclonal bands found in 76 of the 210 samples was assayed by Helena Titan Hi-Res agarose gel electrophoresis (HRAGE). The correlation coefficient between the three sets of capillary electrophoresis monoclonal band results and the Helena quantitation was 0.92 or better. Although the quantitative comparison of monoclonal bands by HR015EC was very good, the lack of sharpness of monoclonal bands using the HR015EC kit meant our preference was to use the JG method on either the ABI or on the Biofocus.