Bioluminescent aptamer-based sandwich-type assay of anti-myelin basic protein autoantibodies associated with multiple sclerosis

Abstract

Bioluminescent solid-phase sandwich-type microassay was developed to detect multiple sclerosis (MS)-associated autoantibodies in human sera. The assay is based on two different 2′-F-Py RNA aptamers against the target autoantibodies as biospecific elements, and Ca2+-regulated photoprotein obelin as a reporter. The paper describes elaboration of the assay and its application to 91 serum samples from patients with clinically definite MS and 86 ones from individuals healthy in terms of MS. Based on the receiver-operator curve (ROC) analysis, the chosen threshold value as clinical decision limit offers sensitivity of 63.7% and specificity of 94.2%. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) value of 0.87 shows a good difference between the groups under investigation. The likelihood ratio of 10.97 proves the diagnostic value of the assay and its potential as one of the laboratory MS-tests.