[Causes of anomalous patterns of haptoglobin using polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis]

We could observe several anomalous electrophoretic patterns of haptoglobin during serotype analysis. We classified these anomalous patterns of haptoglobin into two major classes. The first is the change of number of haptoglobin bands, and the second is the shift from the normal serotype patterns. The change of number of haptoglobin bands was caused by unsaturation of haptoglobin in binding with hemoglobin, mixing of different serotypes by blood transfusion or injection of haptoglobin and serotype variants of haptoglobin. The shift of haptoglobin PAGE pattern was occurred from a large amount of M-protein or lipoproteins in serum.