How to choose your glucagon assay

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Mercodia has over 30 years’ experience of developing premium immunoassay kits, notably within cardiometabolic disorders. The high specificity and sensitivity of the ELISA kits makes it easier for you to get reliable results. Below we share tips on what to look for in a good glucagon assay.

Sensitivity

• Make sure to ask about the analytical sensitivity of the assay before purchasing.
• Many assays have a measurement range set much broader than what they can measure, have in mind how high or low you expect your samples to be and confirm with the developer the accurate limits.

Mercodia Glucagon ELISA 10-1271-01 has superior sensitivity, which enables you to measure physiologically suppressed levels of glucagon.

Specificity

• Make sure to study the cross-reactivity table carefully.
• Any cross-reactivity to the proglucagon-derived gut peptides oxyntomodulin and glicentin should be low and if present, well described since they contain the full glucagon sequence.
• Glicentin circulates at much higher levels than glucagon, and therefore cross-reactivity can create serious measurement errors when trying to measure glucagon.

Mercodia Glucagon ELISA 10-1271-01 has very low cross-reactivity to oxyntomodulin and glicentin.

Sample volume

• Check the required sample volume to make sure it meets your needs.

Most commercially available methods require at least 50-100 µL of plasma. Mercodia Glucagon ELISA 10-1271-01 was developed and optimized to require minimal sample volumes, with the assay for human samples requiring only 25 µL per well.

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References

1. Mj B, Nw A, J P, et al. Specificity and sensitivity of commercially available assays for glucagon and oxyntomodulin measurement in humans. European journal of endocrinology. 2014;170(4).
2. Campbell JE, Drucker DJ. Islet α cells and glucagon–critical regulators of energy homeostasis. Nat Rev Endocrinol. 2015;11(6):329-338.
3. Howard JW, Kay RG, Tan T, Minnion J, Creaser CS. Identification of plasma protease derived metabolites of glucagon and their formation under typical laboratory sample handling conditions. Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom. 2015;29(2):171-181.
4. Wewer Albrechtsen NJ, Kuhre RE, Windeløv JA, et al. Dynamics of glucagon secretion in mice and rats revealed using a validated sandwich ELISA for small sample volumes. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2016;311(2):E302-309.
5. Kahn SE, Mather KJ, Arslanian SA, et al. Hyperglucagonemia does not explain the β-cell hyperresponsiveness and insulin resistance in dysglycemic youth compared with adults: lessons from the rise study. Diabetes Care. 2021;44(9):1961-1969.