Key result
A highly sensitive sandwich ELISA was successfully established to measure the titin N-terminal fragment in urine, demonstrating a sensitivity of 27.9 pmol/L and applicability across healthy individuals and muscular dystrophy patients.
A highly sensitive sandwich ELISA was successfully developed to measure urinary N-terminal titin fragments, offering a potential non-invasive biomarker for muscle damage and muscular dystrophies.
Enables non-invasive titin fragment detection; extends biomarker research in muscular dystrophy but requires validation before clinical use.
Muscle damage and loss of muscle mass are triggered by immobilization, loss of appetite, dystrophies and chronic wasting diseases. In addition, physical exercise causes muscle damage. In damaged muscle, the N-terminal and C-terminal regions of titin, a giant sarcomere protein, are cleaved by calpain-3, and the resulting fragments are excreted into the urine via glomerular filtration. Therefore, we considered titin fragments as promising candidates for reliable and non-invasive biomarkers of muscle injury. Here, we established a sandwich ELISA that can measure the titin N-terminal fragment over a biologically relevant range of concentrations, including those in urine samples from older, non-ambulatory Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients and from healthy donors under everyday life conditions and after exercise. Our results indicate that the established ELISA could be a useful tool for the screening of muscular dystrophies and also for monitoring the progression of muscle disease, evaluating the efficacy of therapeutic approaches, and investigating exercise-related sarcomeric disruption and repair processes.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Maruyama et al. (2016) studied Healthy volunteers and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (n=30). Titin N-terminal fragment ELISA was evaluated on Assay sensitivity and linearity. A highly sensitive sandwich ELISA was successfully established to measure the titin N-terminal fragment in urine, demonstrating a sensitivity of 27.9 pmol/L and applicability across healthy individuals and muscular dystrophy patients.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: