Talk:ELISA

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ELISA and EIA are closley related, but different things - ELISA is a swedish invention and EIA is a Dutch invention

The article is completely impenetrable to laypersons. Not only are the explanations immersed in jargon, but there is no plainly stated purpose of ELISA. Why would one use it? What for? Are there newer techniques that (may) make it obsolete?

Does anyone have information on "false positive" and "false negative" rates and interpretations? What are these rates? What situations can lead to a false positive or a false negative ... both test errors as well as clinical causes.

I suspect that false postives and negatives are related to the specific test being run by ELISA, rather than the general technique. I think that that individual reagents and their conditions are where problems would mostly arise from. Dancarney 22:44, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ELISA-sandwich.svg

This picture is confusing and do not correspond to the written description of a sandwich ELISA. It looks like a mixture between a indirect and sandwich ELISA. I think the enzyme-linked antibody binds to the antigen directly. No "detecting antibody" is needed, so the third step described in the picture, "(3) detecting antibody is added, and binds to antigen;" is wrong and should be deleted. /Izor 130.243.248.239 17:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the text and the image do not match up. I think the image actually represents a very common methodology used for ELISA (at least in my experience). You're right that a detecting antibody may not be needed if the secondary antibody is enzyme-conjugated, but in practice the conjugation is expensive and thus can be much more practically done by using an extra step with a detecting antibody. Anyway, I've been meaning to fix up and clarify the text for a while, but I haven't had time to do it. Please go ahead if you have the time, though...Be bold! — JVinocur (talk • contribs) 17:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I've attempted to make this clearer. If someone would like to rewrite so that it reads more nicely, they could then delete these three posts. --Username132 (talk) 18:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I've printed off this article to refer to with a university project I'm doing, however the image prints off with a black background, and all that shows is the blue and red shapes. I've tried saving the image and changing it to jpeg or similar, but same happens? Is there any reason for this? can anyone help?! Thanks Alex 17:12, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Not sure what to tell you, unfortunately...you might try using a different web browser, I guess? — JVinocur (talk • contribs) 23:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

It's OK now, I used the ingenious, and extremely technical technique of pressing 'print screen' to get a screen shot of the image! Thanks for your help anyway, it probably is my browser; I use firefox. Alex 23:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)