A non competitive enzyme immunoassay of human lactoferrin in biological fluids

A sandwich enzyme immunoassay was developed for human lactoferrin using polystyrene balls coated with specific IgG fraction as the first antibody and peroxidase labelled IgG fraction as the second antibody. The detection limit was 1 microgram/l. A good parallelism was observed with the curves obtained from standard lactoferrin (purified from mammary gland), plasma lactoferrin (mainly derived from granulocytes), and pancreatic lactoferrin demonstrating that the assay may be used to measure the level of the protein in different biological materials. The simplicity and the sensitivity of this assay may permit the follow-up of patients with chronic calcifying pancreatitis (in which an increase of pancreatic lactoferrin has already been demonstrated) and a study of the protein in various circumstances leading to a better understanding of its biological role.