Short CommunicationCommercial insulin immunoassays fail to detect commonly prescribed insulin analogues
Section snippets
Insulin analogues
Fifteen different insulin analogues were supplied by the Pharmacy at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, UK. Details of the analogues assessed are provided in Table 1 and the amino acid sequences and structure modifications for each analogue are provided in the online methods.
Results
This cross-reactivity of commercial insulin assays to insulin analogues are shown in Table 1.
Discussion
We have shown that commercially available insulin assays fail to detect many insulin analogues commonly prescribed in the United Kingdom. This is the first study to comprehensively assess all combinations of available exogenous insulins and assays in the UK.
As the complexity of modification to the native human insulin molecule increases, the ability of assays to detect them decreased. Four of the insulins tested (Actrapid®, Humulin® S, Humulin® I and Insulatard®) have identical sequence and
Author contributions
CP, DC, AA, LC, CE, GW, and TM researched the data. CP and TM wrote the manuscript and researched the data.
DC, AA, LC, CE, and GW reviewed/edited the manuscript.
Acknowledgements
TM is funded by National Institute of Health Research CSO Fellowship, this paper's guarantor. DC is funded by the Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation (RGAG/217). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health. Technical support was provided by Nicholas Porter (Royal Surrey County Hospital), David Halsall (Addenbrooke's Hospital), Keith Burling (NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, Core Biochemical Assay
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