Semiautomatic and robotic methods for determining serum haptoglobin levels

The assay of Makimura and Suzuki for serum haptoglobin has been adapted to use one tube with both semiautomated and robotic methods. The adaptation permits the determination of haptoglobin in several hundred serum samples per day. Both methods were strongly correlated with the original two-tube method and had within-assay variability of 4.4% for the semiautomated and 4.8% for the robotic method. Day-to-day variability averaged 6.0% for the semiautomated and 5.5% for the robotic method. The y-intercepts for both assays were higher than that of the original two-tube method, and thus, reference values are higher than those reported previously.