DETERMINATION OF AMYLOID TYPE BY ELISA USING MILLIGRAM AMOUNTS OF TISSUE

A new procedure was developed for isolation and immunochemical identif ication of amyloid proteins. This procedure involves extraction of amy loid proteins from tissues with aqueous acidic acetonitrile, their pur ification by HPLC and identification by ELISA. In this way the type of amyloid proteins was defined in amyloid-containing tissues obtained f rom 15 patients. The technique is simple, rapid and enables typing of amyloid proteins using only milligram amounts of tissue. This is in co ntrast to the conventional amyloid isolation and chemical identificati on technique which is laborious, time consuming and requires gram amou nts of tissues. The procedure may enable the identification of the typ e of amyloid in biopsy specimens and thus help in evaluation of progno sis and determination of the therapeutic policy.