I am trying to evaluate stress levels in different developmental stages of rats. In order to do so I need to measure corticosterone in their fecal, urine, or blood samples. Since we are short on budget, we are looking for an economical option.
Hi Maryam Fallahi
You can purchase ELISA Kits.
Corticosterone ELISA kit from Abcam (catalog number ab108821): $225 for a single plate.
Thanks
Samir
Thank you for your response, I really appreciate it Samir Ranjan Panda
If it is a one-time measure, Samir's right, ELISA is the way to go. Radioimmunoassays (RIA) for CORT require radioactive iodine, and it is not all that common for labs to get a radiation license for I-125 these days. This means you would ship samples out and pay a fee (likely $75-125 per sample) to a lab for hire (although RIA is considered the gold standard for measurement). Situationally, mass spec can be cheaper than ELISA- there are three things that each could tilt you towards mass-spec- 1) if your institute has a mass-spec facility, 2) if you want to measure more than just CORT in the sample, and 3) if you have small amounts of sample. Sending samples out for Mass-Spec can be expensive, too, especially if you are also asking the fee-for-service mass-spec facility to develop the measurement technique. It would be better if you could tell them that you will be requesting these measurements regularly so they keep using the protocol they developed for you. Over the long-run, like if you're writing a grant proposal and you are projecting five years of say 100 measurements a year, mass spec can come out cheaper than ELISA. Right now, we're working with a fee-for-service lab to get three hormone quantifications per sample at $60/ sample. But if you need an answer for one experiment and just need CORT, and you need it this month, then I agree, go ELISA.
Thank you very much indeed. Such a complete and practical answer Eric M Blalock
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