The Sebia Capillarys instrument is an automated capillary electrophoresis (CE) system for serum protein analysis, and is now a popular platform for the routine analysis of serum proteins in the investigation of myeloma. Clinical interpretation of protein electrophoresis requires experience of pattern recognition and can be subjective.
This short study evaluates the use of a software feature, the Interpretative Aid, designed as a support tool to help in identifying pathological patterns in protein separations, and investigates the use of the Interpretative Aid for the automatic discrimination of morphologically normal migration patterns from abnormal patterns. The study evaluates the Interpretative Aid software in the interpretation of the electrophoretic pattern generated on the Sebia Capillarys2 system. Specifically, we evaluate the ability of the software to distinguish abnormal curves from normal curves by retrospectively comparing our routine practice of manual interpretation by experienced biomedical scientists.
Protein separation
Using the Sebia Protein 6 assay, serum proteins were separated into six fractions: albumin, alpha-1, alpha-2, beta-1, beta-2 and gamma globulins. The Interpretative Aid software rules were set up to flag results as abnormal if A1 < normal, B1 > normal, B2 > B1, and G < normal, or if the migration pattern showed a distorted peak shape.
A retrospective review was undertaken of the results obtained from 500 patients with no known diagnosis of myeloma and compared the outcome of interpretation using the Interpretative Aid software against the opinion of experienced biomedical scientists. Normal values for serum protein analysis are shown in Table 1.
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