Microalbuminuria and borderline-increased albumin excretion determined with a centrifugal analyzer and the Albumin Blue 580 fluorescence assay.

We report a new automated fluorescence assay for determination of albumin in urine. The dye Albumin Blue 580 specifically binds to albumin with exhibition of strong red fluorescence. The albumin concentration is calculated from emission intensity at 616 nm (excitation at 590 nm) and a calibration curve. Two Cobas Fara programs cover working ranges of 2-200 and 1-50 mg/L with detection limits of 1.4 and 0.4 mg/L, respectively. Within-run CVs (n = 10) ranged from 1.7% (189 mg/L) to 8.9% (7.2 mg/L) for 2-200 mg/L and from 2.9% (43.3 mg/L) to 5.7% (2.3 mg/L) for the 1-50 mg/L range. A test of urine samples (n = 100) submitted to routine analysis gave results that agreed well with those by the Behring nephelometric assay: AB 580 = 0.922 (+/-0.010) BNA + 4.16 (+/-0.78). No interference was detected from other urine components, including several proteins and 46 drugs. The high specificity and sensitivity make the method ideal for determination of microalbuminuria. In addition, the method is fast, inexpensive, and well-suited for clinical laboratory application and thus may be used instead of immunoassays.