Rate-nephelometric determination of fibronectin in plasma

We describe a kinetic immunonephelometric method for the determination of fibronectin in human plasma, used with the Beckman ICS rate nephelometer. The method is rapid and cost-effective. Two commercially available controls stated by the manufacturer to contain 200 and 295 mg/L were found to contain 198 and 290 mg/L, respectively. Mean analytical recovery was 104%. Within-run precision (CV) for normal samples was 3.8%, between-day precision 5.1%. For samples containing subnormal concentrations of fibronectin, these figures were 3.8% and 6.7%, respectively. Results by the method described here agreed and correlated well with those by a commercially available turbidimetric assay. With appropriately diluted samples, the range of measurement is 40 to 1000 mg/L. Normal values for women and men were 286 (SD 84) and 340 (SD 55) mg/L, respectively, in good agreement with values published by others.