Friday, September 26, 2008
Attendance.
Erm, Hi. haha. Anyway, I decided to talk about HBeAg that is done in the lab using Architect machine at the Immunology sector.
HBeAg determination is used to monitor the progress of hepatitis B viral infection.
Hepatitis B viral infection could be contracted via contact with infectious blood, body fluids from having sex with an infected person, sharing contaminated needles to inject drugs/ reused during treatment, or from an infected mother to her newborn.
HBeAg can be detected in the early phase of Hep B infection after the appearance of Hep B surface Ag. Both increases significantly during the viral replication in acute infection. HBeAg's presence correlates with increased no. of the infecious virus aka Dane particles, the occurence of core particles in the nucleus of the hepatocytes (liver cells, presence of hep B viral specific DNA and DNA polymerase in the patient's serum.
The virus reproduces transporting into the liver by first attaching to the membrane. The cpre particle then releases its DNA and DNA polymerase contents into the liver cell nucleus. Once it enters within the cell nucleus, the Hep B DNA causes the liver cell to replicate the DNA and produce more copies of the viral DNA. Then it produces copies of the virus within the cell before being released into the blood stream.
Architect uses Chemiluminescent microparticle Immunoassay (CMIA) technology and the presence/absence of HBeAg is determined by comparing the chemiluminescent signal in the reaction to the cutoff(CO) signal. If it is lesser than the CO signal, the sample is considered to be nonreactive for HBeAg.
Usually blood collected from plain tubes are used and the interpretation of the results are as follow:
Specimen with S/CO values < 1.000 = Non-reactive
Specimen with S/CO values >or= 1.000 = Reactive
Yup, thats about it for now. I'm open to questions, but pls don't make things too hard for me. Haha.
Debbie
TG02
