The detection of rubella-specific IgM antibodies by radioimmunoassay

An indirect solid-phase radioimmunoassay (RIA) has been developed for the detection of immunoglobulin (Ig) class-specific rubella antibodies. A commercial rubella haemagglutinin is dried and fixed on to the wells of flexible microtitre plates and allowed to react with serial dilutions of whole or fractionated human sera. Class-specific rubella antibodies are then detected by determining the specific binding of 125I-labelled anti-human IgG or IgM. The RIA was first evaluated by comparison with the heamagglutination-inhibition (HI) test for the detection of rubella-specific IgM in gel-filtration fractions. RIA was found to be as specific as HI but 50-150 times more sensitive. Rubella-specific IgG antibodies did not interfere in specific IgM determinations by RIA and therefore the latter technique applied to unfractionated sera. The results obtained indicate that RIA on unfractionated sera is a practical, sensitive and specific technique which could provide a reliable method for the diagnosis of rubella. The rubella-specific IgM titres obtained by RIA were not increased by the removal of IgG by pretreatment of sera with Staphylococcal Protein A. (author)