Sepsis progression monitoring via human serum fibronectin detection based on sandwich-type electrochemical...

Sepsis has always been a severe clinical problem in critical care medicine due to its rather high mortality and poor prognosis. The current study reported for the first time a practical immunosensor for fibronectin (FN) detection in human serum by electrochemistry. A simple but robust sandwich-type strategy was employed without any complex design or material modifications, which exhibited a linear calibration plot over the 15.625-500 ng/mL concentration range and a detection limit of 15 ng/mL. The results showed that the proposed strategy displayed an excellent selectivity against other non-target substances in human serum, a higher accuracy and a better stability when compared with the traditional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in detecting the same or mixed serum from 21 healthy subjects. Furthermore, the proposed electrochemical immunosensor successfully monitored the level of serum FN at various time points in five septic patients during the treatment. These findings demonstrate that the proposed strategy is highly sensitive and accurate in monitoring sepsis progress and has significant clinical improvements over the ELISA methodology, signifying a great potential of a commercial kit.