Evaluation of a radioimmunoassay technique measuring calcitonin in the bovine, ovine and porcine species.

A heterologous RIA system was set up for measuring bovine, ovine and porcine calcitonin (CT). The system consisted of porcine GT used as standard and for the preparation of an iodinated tracer. The antiserum used was raised against ovine GT. For each analysis was used 25–200 µl blood plasma. Practical detection limit was 0.25 µg of CT per litre of blood plasma. The parallelism between the dose response curves for the p-GT standard and for the assay of increasing amounts of bovine, ovine and porcine blood plasma showed the suitability of the present assay system to study the GT secretion in these species. Furthermore, the reliability of the method was verified by a clearly recognized CT response to calcium infusion.