Abstract
In the routine activities of a clinical examination laboratory, the laboratory technician is faced with difficulties of processing many samples rapidly and economically within a short space of time.
It is generally recognized the invention of an electric floatation method has made the precise and ready fractionation of protein in the blood or serum possible. It has been eagerly welcomed not only in the field of clinical medicine, but also in basic medicine as well as in the realm of protein chemistry. However, in order to fractionate a protein sample by this method it is necessary that a sample should be concentrated to a prescribed degree. This is particularly necessary with low-concentration samples such as the saliva, urine and medullary fluid.
In the present study, the authors comparatively studied the effectiveness between the Carbowax method, one of widely used concentration methods, and the freezing-dry method developed by the authors. The original saliva sample of 0.13g/50ml could be concentrated to 1g/50ml by Carbowax 4000 and to2g/50ml by Carbowax 1500 in two hours respectively. On the other hand, the use of our free-zingdry method could concentrate the same sample to 10g/50ml within the same time length.
From this comparative study, the following conclusions were obtained.
1. As compared with the Carbowax method, the freezing-dry method could process the same specimen at a speed 10 times as that of Carbowax 4000 and 5 times as that of Carbowax 1500. It was possible to obtain a highly-concentrated protein fluid in a very short length of time.
2. The manipulation of the method was easy and there was no possibility of sample undergoing a degenerate change.
3. Influence due to change in salts, which happens as a result of concentrated saliva with the electric floatation method, did not appear with the present method.
