15 Facts About ELISA

ELISA has been used as a diagnostic tool in medicine, plant pathology, and biotechnology, as well as a quality control check in various industries.

Note, ELISA can perform other forms of ligand binding assays instead of strictly "immuno" assays, though the name carried the original "immuno" because of the common use and history of development of this method.

Analyte is called the ligand because it will specifically bind or ligate to a detection reagent, thus ELISA falls under the bigger category of ligand binding assays.

Traditional ELISA typically involves chromogenic reporters and substrates that produce some kind of observable color change to indicate the presence of antigen or analyte.

In 2012, an ultrasensitive, enzyme-based ELISA test using nanoparticles as a chromogenic reporter was able to give a naked-eye colour signal, from the detection of mere attograms of analyte.

Related searches

ELISA tests are broken into several types of tests based on how the analytes and antibodies are bonded and used.

The sandwich or indirect ELISA provides a solution to this problem, by using a "capture" antibody specific for the test antigen to pull it out of the serum's molecular mixture.

Therefore, a sandwich ELISA used for research often needs validation, to reduce the risk of false positive results.

The steps for this ELISA are somewhat different from the first two examples:.

Some competitive ELISA kits include enzyme-linked antigen rather than enzyme-linked antibody.

ELISA can be performed to evaluate either the presence of antigen or the presence of antibody in a sample, it is a useful tool for determining serum antibody concentrations .

ELISA can be used in toxicology as a rapid presumptive screen for certain classes of drugs.

ELISA was the first screening test widely used for HIV because of its high sensitivity.

ELISA results are reported as a number; the most controversial aspect of this test is determining the "cut-off" point between a positive and a negative result.

ELISA tests are extensively employed for in vitro diagnostics in medical laboratories.