Detection of microalbuminuria is important in the management of diabetic patients since it is predictive of development of proteinuria and nephropathy. Two sensitive and specific in-house ELISAs for microalbuminuria were established and validated. One of the ELISAs was based on antigen coating while the other employed antibody coating. Recovery and linearity experiments gave acceptable results of 100 +/- 10%, while precision results were <10% for intra-assay and <12% for inter-assay coefficients of variation (CVs). The standard curve ranged from 10-625 ug/l, equivalent to 0.2-12.5 mg/l for urine samples diluted 1:20 fold. When the antibody coated ELISA was compared to antigen coated ELISA, a correlation of r=0.996 was obtained. When compared to commercial kits, the in-house ELISAs gave good correlations of r=0.961 versus the Boehringer Mannheim Micral Test strips and r=0.940 versus Ames Microalb Turbidimetry. The normal microalbumin reference ranges determined for 12h, first morning and random urine samples were 0.7-5.3 mg, 0.1-10.2 mg/l and 0.8-26.1 mg/l respectively. The normal albumin excretion rate (AER) was 1.0-7.3 ug/min while untimed urine samples gave results of 0.1-0.9 and 0.2-1.6 mg/mmol after dividing by creatinine concentrations. The ELISAs were used to detect microalbuminuria in 338 random urine samples from diabetic patients. A high percentage 47.9% was found to be positive for microalbuminuria and 18.0% had macroalbuminuria >25 mg/mmol. Thus screening for microalbuminuria together with creatinine measurements using random urine samples can be used for management of diabetic patients.
This is our initial response towards preparation of nano-inductors garnet for high operating frequencies strontium iron garnet (Sr3Fe5O12) denoted as SrIG and yttrium iron garnet (Y3Fe5O12) denoted as YIG. The garnet nano crystals were prepared by novel sol-gel technique. The phase and crystal structure of the prepared samples were identified by using X-ray diffraction analysis. SEM images were done to reveal the surface morphology of the samples. Raman spectra was taken for yttrium iron garnet (Y3Fe5O12). The magnetic properties of the samples namely initial permeability (micro), relative loss factor (RLF) and quality factor (Q-Factor) were done by using LCR meter. From the XRD profile, both of the Y3Fe5O12 and Sr3Fe5O12 samples showed single phase garnet and crystallization had completely occurred at 900 degrees C for the SrIG and 950 degrees C for the YIG samples. The YIG sample showed extremely low RLF value (0.0082) and high density 4.623 g/cm3. Interesting however is the high Q factor (20-60) shown by the Sr3Fe5O12 sample from 20-100 MHz. This high performance magnetic property is attributed to the homogenous and cubical-like microstructure. The YIG particles were used as magnetic feeder for EM transmitter. It was observed that YIG magnetic feeder with the EM transmitter gave 39% higher magnetic field than without YIG magnetic feeder.