A Highly Sensitive, Reproducible Assay for Determining 4-hydroxynonenal Protein Adducts in Biological Material

Oxidative stress is associated with numerous diseases, and markers of oxidative stress in biological material are becoming a mainstay of both experimental and clinical/epidemiological research. Lipid peroxidation is a major form of oxidative stress, but due to their rapid degradation and instability, lipid peroxides are notoriously difficult to measure, particularly in biological specimens where their production and removal are continuously occuring. Thus, a commonly used surrogate marker of lipid peroxidation is protein adducts of 4-Hydroxynonenal (HNE), an α, β-unsaturated hydroxyalkenal (i.e., a reactive aldehyde) formed via degradation of oxidized polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). HNE adducts can be measured via commercially-available immunosorbent assays, but these have their limitations due to excessive costs, and reproducibility among laboratories is challenging due to variability in assay sensitivity, procedure, and reagents. Here we present a reproducible, facile, and economically conservative protocol for quantifying HNE protein adducts. The key to this protocol is to generate HNE-adduct standards by incubating bovine serum albumin (BSA) with HNE. These standards are then adsorbed to immunsorbent plastic in a multi-well plate format alongside biological samples. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is then performed on the multi-well plate using commercially-available primary and secondary antibodies, and a peroxide-based fluorescent developing reagent. This protocol is highly sensitive and offers advantages to commercial sources in that it allows for reproducible, high-throughput quantitation of HNE adducts in a large number of samples. As such, it may be useful as a biomarker of chronic oxidative stress for experimental and clinical studies.