Establishment of a microspheres-based homogeneous fluorescence immunoassay for the rapid detection of cardiac troponin I

Myocardial infarction occurs rapidly, and thus the rapid detection of cTnI levels is the key to its diagnosis. Most current assays take 10–30 min. In this study, we developed a method for accurately measuring cardiac troponin I (cTnI) levels in human sera with amplified luminescence neighborhood homogeneous assay (AlphaLISA). The method involves coupling two cTnI antibodies targeting different epitopes to the surface of carboxylated donor and acceptor beads. The final signal values were detected by the double-antibody sandwich method, and the best reaction conditions were obtained by optimizing the experimental conditions. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and precision of the method were evaluated. Results showed that the method requires only 3 min to produce the results, the detection sensitivity is 27.06 ng L−1, and the measurement range is 34.56–62 500 ng L−1. cTnI-AlphaLISA has an intra-assay precision of 2.18–4.57% (<10%) and an inter-assay precision of 5.60–6.95% (<10%). The relative recovery rates are within reasonable limits. In addition, the serum assay results of the method were compared with chemiluminescence immunoassay, and the results are in agreement with one another (ρ = 0.8803; P < 0.0001). The method is expected to be developed as a routine method, but further studies and evaluations are needed.