Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (1986) 17, 255-262
© 1986 The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy
research-article |
A comparison of the homogeneous enzyme immunoassay (EMIT) autocarousel and quantitative single test (QST) systems with the radioenzymatic assay
Department of Microbiology, United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7EH, England
accepted 28 August 1985
A comparison was made of three methods for gentamicin assay; (i) a modification of the radioenzymatic transferase technique, which was used as the reference method; (ii) EMIT autocarousel; and (iii) EMIT quantitative single test (QST). Correlation of both EMIT systems with the radioenzymatic method and with each other gave acceptable correlation coefficients, 0.955–0.975, for the range of concentrations tested. The coefficients of variation for within assay studies were between 3.3 and 4.9 for all three methods. Both EMIT systems provided rapid results, within minutes, albeit at a higher cost than the radioenzymatic assay. The radioenzymatic technique although cheaper with regard to the cost of materials involves considerably more technical time and effort and might not be considered suitable for samples received out-of-hours. However the combination of both EMIT systems provides facilities for batch and one-off sample tests and the ease of operation and rapid results are suited to out-of-hours operation.