Automated kinetic determination of lactate dehydrogenase isoenzymes in serum

A steady-state kinetic method has been revised for measuring lactate dehydrogenase isoenzyme activities, which relates the inhibition of heart-type isoenzyme activity to the overall isoenzyme composition of the enzyme subunits. The method depends on the pH-dependent formation of an inhibitory ternary complex by the heart-type isoenzyme with NAD+ and pyruvate (if the reaction is measured by NADH oxidation). A preincubation step in the previous method is eliminated. The isoenzymes are measured by measuring the reduction of pyruvate in two different concentrations, which favor either the total or fractional activity, depending on the concentrations of pyruvate and the percentage of heart-type subunits. The method has been adapted to a centrifugal analyzer, which has speeded automated isoenzyme determinations, with an accuracy comparable to that for electrophoretic methods.