Highly Sensitive ELISA Using Membrane-Based Microwave-Mediated Electrochemical Immunoassay for Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone Detection

Abstract

Thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) plays a critical role in regulating physiological symptoms in human, thus, it is important to detect TSH with high sensitivity and specificity is urgently needed in the human serum sample. In this paper, we proposed a strategy to detect TSH antigen using a membrane-based microwave-mediated analytical device developed for highly responsive electrochemical immunoassay with sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) format. Experimental assay was done with different TSH antigen concentrations. It was found that the immunoassay was able to detect TSH antigen as low as 0.2 mIU/L. The total detection time from preparation of samples to measurement was within 60 min. The specificity of this immunoassay was proven that against unspecific proteins as the almost low signal was obtained for all tested solutions. Finally, exploratory experiments using standard human serum samples with TSH antigens were carried out prior to a successful trial using clinical human serum samples. Our results indicate that this membrane-based microwave-mediated analytical electrochemical immunoassay device could be used as a new platform for low cost, sensitive, specific, swift, and point-of-care diagnosis of TSH. Moreover, the advance system could define a powerful point-of-care tool in the next generation of technology for detecting and signaling biomarkers at early stages by using electrochemical immunosensor.