A solid-phase enzymeimmunoassay for the determination of progesterone in bovine, porcine and ovine plasma

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to develop a valid quantitative enzymeimmunoassay (EIA) for progesterone in blood plasma of cattle, pigs and sheep. Rabbit anti-progesterone, mouse monoclonal anti-rabbit IgG, authentic progesterone, and acetylcholine esterase bound covalently to progesterone were the principal reagents used to develop the EIA. Ninety-six well microliter plates were coated with mouse monoclonal anti-rabbit IgG and saturated with bovine serum albumin before use. Rabbit anti-progesterone was diluted to a working dilution of 1:2.0 × 106. Standard curves were linear and ranged from 1.56 to 400 pg of progesterone per well which allowed for the measurement of 0.03125 to 8.0 ng mL−1. Assay sensitivity averaged 1.56 pg well−1. Progesterone was extracted from plasma samples with petroleum ether. Plasma samples (n = 3 or 4 from each species) with unknown amounts of progesterone that were extracted and serially diluted with EIA buffer did not deviate from parallelism with progesterone standard curves in buffer. The correlation between EIA and radioimmunoassay (RIA) measurements of progesterone in the same plasma samples was high (P < 0.0001) for all three species (r = 0.96 for bovine; r = 0.96 for porcine; r = 0.94 for ovine). The regression of EIA data on RIA data produced the following equations:[Formula: see text]The intra- and inter-assay coefficients of variation were 5.4 and 10.6% for bovine, 5.8 and 11.0% for porcine and, 6.1 and 12.3% for ovine, respectively. These data show that this EIA is a valid and reliable memod for quantitating progesterone in extracts of bovine, porcine and ovine plasma. Key words: Enzymeimmunoassay, progesterone, plasma, bovine, porcine, ovine