Whilst a number of assay formats have been described, all are of limited sensitivity and require the use of isotopes. Many use polyclonal antibodies. Furthermore, a wide range of follistatin preparations have been used as standards, complicating inter-laboratory comparison. Serially diluted human samples gave dose response curves parallel to the standard. The possible presence in certain samples of mixtures of follistatin isoforms with different immunoreactivities poses major problems of interpretation in this and all other current follistatin immunoassays.
Further work is needed to identify the major immunoreactive forms in different tissues and fluids.
Nevertheless, the new assay has a number of advantages over previous assays and should prove a useful tool for various clinical and physiological studies. Download the FULL TEXT of this article in Acrobat PDF format. If you have not previously downloaded PDF files we suggest you access our Advice page for further information. Journal of Endocrinology Return to the Contents List - Vol.