Quantitative detection of a variant prealbumin associated with type 1 familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy (Japanese...

A simple and quantitative method for detecting the variant prealbumin associated with familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy has been developed. This method is based on (1) a rapid and simple high performance liquid chromatographic method for the purification of prealbumin, using an immunoadsorbent-affinity column with bound monospecific prealbumin antibody, (2) the presence of an extra methionine in the variant prealbumin at position 30, detected by cyanogen bromide cleavage, and (3) sensitive and quantitative detection of cleaved peptides by reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography. This non-radioisotopic method gives quantitatively reliable results on serum samples as small as 0.5 ml. This method is not only useful for the detection of patients and carriers of familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy, but also for determination of the ratio of normal to variant prealbumin in the serum samples.