Talk:Complement fixation test

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Use of complement fixation in current clinical immunological testing

Regarding "However, in clinical diagnostics labs it has been largely superseded by other serological methods such as ELISA and by DNA-based methods of pathogen detection, particularly PCR.": While I have no issue with the truth of this statement, I think it would be wise to provide accompanying information as to why this is the case, perhaps with suitable references (e.g. the incubation time required with complement fixation is long, at 14-16 hours). Otherwise this may simply be seen as an opinion/personal preference rather than accepted protocol in laboratories. - Iscariot (talk) 19:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Guinea pig serum?

How is the guinea pig serum used in the complement test? My understanding of the process from reading the article is essentially: 1) add an antigen to the patient's serum 2) add sheep RBCs attached to anti sheep RBC antibodies to the patient's serum 3) if the RBCs are not lysed, the test is positive If antibodies are present, the complement in the serum will be used up in step 1, leaving none to lyse the sheep RBCs. mcs (talk) 03:00, 12 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]