Question

Sigfried is a technician in a diagnostic lab. He performs an HIV ELISA on a patient sample. However, during the ELISA procedure, Sigfried forgets to use the secondary antibody. What are the expected results?

Answer 1

Hello,

Ans)ELISA is enzyme linked immunosorbent assay used to detect HIV.While using indirct or sandwich ELISA methods if the secondary antibodies are not added,we can get false result because secondary antibodies are linked/conjugated with an enzyme.When this secondary antibody attaches to the primary antibody(present in the sample) that is attached to the antigen on the microtiter plate,in the presence of substrate if this enzyme(on the secondary antibody) catalysis a reaction that results in production of colored produced.This indicates that the patient with the given sample is positive for HIV.If we skip this step of adding secondary antibodies we will definitely get false results.

Hope this helps.