The Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (Elisa) for γ-C-Reactive Protein Detection

Abstract

C-Reactive Protein is an acute phase protein found in elevated levels in the blood during virtually all diseases associated with active inflammation or tissue destruction, particularly in patients with rheumatoid diseases, acute infectious processes, postmyocardial infarction or surgery, advanced and widespread malignancy, and chronic infections. Tillet and Francis (1) first discovered the existence of this protein in the sera of patients suffering from pneumoccal pneumonia. The precipitation of this protein was achieved by the addition of C-polysaccharide (C-substance) from the pneumococcal bacterial cell wall to the acute-phase serum in the presence of calcium ions. C-polysaccharide is composed of bacterial mucopeptide constituents, ribitol phosphate, N-acetyl-galactosamine phosphate, glucose, N-acetyl diaminotrideoxyhexose, and choline phosphate (2-4). The name "C-Reactive Protein" is based in this reaction of CRP to C-polysaccharide. CRP was detected by MacLeod and Avery (5,6) by capillary precipitation and complement fixation techniques with rabbit anti-CRP antibody (CRPA) . McCarty (7) crystallized rabbit ex-reactive protein (CxRP) and showed that it is analogous to the human CRP which appears in sera during inflammation.