fbpx
 

HealthcareA Guide To The ELISA Test And The Purchasing Of Reagents

If you are in any way related to medicine and healthcare, then you must know how antibodies work. Your immune system produces these in order to fight off infections. After having successfully won the battle, antibodies tend to stay in your organism for a while, which means that their presence can tell you whether you have had certain types of infections and diseases in the past.

I bet you are interested in whether any of this has to do with the current pandemic, so here’s your answer: https://www.today.com/health/what-antibody-your-immune-system-response-coronavirus-explained-t178142

How do you know if you have certain antibodies in your organism, though? Are there any tests that you can do in order to determine that? If yes, how do those tests actually work? These are all the questions that an ordinary person will have whenever he or she hears about the whole concept of antibodies and their effect on diseases and infections.

There definitely is a way to test this and it is being used in laboratories all around the world. If you work in a lab yourself, you are already familiar with this type of testing, but, as a good scientist, you understand that you never stop learning. Your interest might be more related to the reagents necessary for this test, though. That’s why I will address both these issues in the article, by explaining the antibodies testing and letting you know which reagents you need to buy and how you can find them.

What Is ELISA?

The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test is used to determine and measure antibodies in your blood. In other words, it can help detect whether you have any antibodies related to certain infections and conditions. If you have been paying close attention to my above explanations, you know that this type of testing can show whether you have had a specific disease in the past. You can find more details on this page.

ELISA is also used in the diagnosing process and it is often done as a screening procedure to determine whether any more in-depth analyses are necessary. It’s done by taking a sample of your blood and forwarding it to the lab, where a technician uses the petri dish and the antigen for the disease that you are tested for. In case your blood contains the antibodies, they will bind to the antigens.

This analysis can be used to diagnose all kinds of diseases. Those include HIV, squamous cell carcinoma, Lyme disease, rotavirus, Zika virus and many different kinds of viruses. People are becoming increasingly interested in ELISA nowadays, probably because of its ability to detect antibodies for the coronavirus. Even though its popularity is on the rise today, this test has been around for a much longer period of time.


What Are ELISA Reagents?

Working in a lab requires you to be familiar with all types of substances and reagents used for all types of tests. When you learn how to do the ELISA test, you will see that it consists of five different stages. All those stages require specific reagents without which the procedure won’t be successful. Performing these types of analyses calls for a responsible and precise person, but it also calls for particular types of substances.

In other words, you can be the best lab technician in the world, but there is absolutely no way for you to go through the whole process if you are lacking certain substances. I suppose that there is no need for me to even mention this, since every single technician in the world is aware of the importance of reagents. It’s like I am trying to explain to a tennis player that they cannot play tennis without a tennis ball. The analogy is completely the same.

What does this mean for you? It means that you will have to learn about the ELISA reagents required throughout the five stages that I have mentioned above. First of all, you need antigens used to coat the microtiter plate wells. After that you need blocking reagents which are there to prevent false positive results. Of course, I suppose I don’t even need to explain that antibodies are the next necessary factor.

In addition to that, you need the substrates that indicate a positive reaction by interacting with the enzymes and creating a colored product. The ones I have mentioned are all procedure reagents, but you will also need some other types, such as stop solutions, wash buffers and stabilizers. Those are used to improve the quality of the ELISA test.

Where To Buy Them?

Since I am pretty sure that you already know about the traditional ways of buying reagents, I’m only going to inform you about the modern way. You can now easily buy them online. Naturally, you have to be careful to find a reliable and trustworthy supplier, but once you have done that, you’ll be able to enjoy the simplicity of buying ELISA reagents.

Leave your vote

0 points
Upvote Downvote

Total votes: 0

Upvotes: 0

Upvotes percentage: 0.000000%

Downvotes: 0

Downvotes percentage: 0.000000%

Digital Health Buzz!

Digital Health Buzz!

Digital Health Buzz! aims to be the destination of choice when it comes to what’s happening in the digital health world. We are not about news and views, but informative articles and thoughts to apply in your business.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Hey there!

Sign in

Forgot password?

Don't have an account? Register

Close
of

Processing files…