blood contamination - (Mar/05/2009 )

Hi,
I'm running western blots for some proteins in pancreatic cyst fluid.
I'm not very familiar with cyst fluid at this point. Is there any way to
test for blood contamination in my samples? I'm concerned about blood
proteins affecting my results.
Thanks.

test for presence of haemoglobin will be the easiest. The other option is to take a small aliquot and look for red blood cells under a microscope.

Thanks for the help, I'll try that.

Hemoglobin urine micromethod assay

Reagents

- TMB solution: dissolve 2 mg of 3’,3’-5’-5’-tetramethylbenzidine in 20 ml of 0.05 M acetic acid (2.862 ml of glacial acetic acid to 1 liter dH2O. For 20 ml, dilute 60 µl of glacial acetic acid with 19.94 ml dH2O)

- 30% Peridrole

- Working solution: mix 300 µl of TMB solution with 2 µl of peridrole. Stable one hour at room temperature.

Procedure

Dispense in well MTP, 200 µl of urine and then add 75 µl of working solution and incubate at room temperature for 10 min. A blue color intensity is correlate with peroxidase activity present in urine.

This method can be used in all biological fluids.