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Rapid detection of unconjugated estriol in the serum via superparamagnetic lateral flow immunochromatographic assay

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Abstract

Unconjugated estriol (uE3) is one of the main naturally occurring estrogens that plays an important role in growth and development of the fetus. Usually, the level of uE3 is very low in men and non-pregnant women, but in pregnant women, the level of estriol has been found to be quite high. Therefore, the combination of uE3, AFP, and hCG is now widely used for Down Syndrome screening as a triple marker. Here, we developed a superparamagnetic lateral flow immunochromatographic assay to quantitatively detect uE3. The detection limit of this assay was 0.86 nmol/L and the linear range for the determination of uE3 was from 1 to 100 nmol/L. The detection time was 15 min and the assay had very low cross-reactivity with estrone (E1), estradiol (E2), and progesterone. The coefficient of variation (CV) of intra- and inter-assay ranged from 5% to 13%. The magnetic signals were stable under 37 °C within 7 d. Moreover, the concentrations of uE3 measured by lateral flow immunochromatographic assay in 230 serum samples collected from pregnant women at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital had a good correlation with those measured by time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay (R = 0.946).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Education Foundation of Military Academies and the project of Beijing Talents (2014400685627G277).

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Author notes

  1. Ce Wang and Di Guan contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Laboratory, Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital, Beijing, 100853, China

    Ce Wang, Chen Chen, Shang He, Xiaoting Liu & Chengbin Wang

  2. Department of Biotechnology, Beijing Center for Physical and Chemical Analysis, Beijing, 100094, China

    Di Guan & Huijuan Wu

Authors
  1. Ce Wang
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  2. Di Guan
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  3. Chen Chen
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  4. Shang He
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  5. Xiaoting Liu
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  6. Chengbin Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chengbin Wang.

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All participants provided written informed consent for themselves after having received a complete description of the study, which was approved by the Ethics Committee of Chinese Peoplee growt least, the superparamagnetic

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Wang, C., Guan, D., Chen, C. et al. Rapid detection of unconjugated estriol in the serum via superparamagnetic lateral flow immunochromatographic assay. Anal Bioanal Chem 410, 123–130 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-017-0699-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-017-0699-6

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