Solid-phase radioimmunoassay for human growth hormone: Experience with antiserum-coated assay-tubes

The solid-phase antibody systrem for the radioimmunoassay of human growth hormone using antibody coated polystyrene assay tubes has been found to give reliable results. Provided that the standard solution and the plasma dilutions are incubated under similar conditions the system works in spite of the fact, that during inculbation some antibody is removed from its binding to polystyrene. The solid-phase antibody system is found to be less susceptible to damage to labelled hormone and provides the possiblity of a two-step inculbaton which allows storage of the unlabelled antigen-antibody complex until a suitable tracer is available. Incubation damage to tracer hromone due to plasma proteins is thus avoided. Apart form its simplicity it offers several advantages over the conventional separation techniques. As in the usual systems teh sensitivity is determined by the quality of the antiseru, the amount and quality of teh tracer hormone and by the incubation volume. The reproducibility of the results is equal to or slightly better than in the compared systems.