High performance enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for determination of miroestrol, a potent phytoestrogen from Pueraria candollei Original Research Article

Pueraria candollei associated preparation is widely applied in folk Thai medicine for rejuvenating purpose in aged people, which correlated with its pharmacological activities reported by pre-clinical and clinical trials. Therefore, standardized products of this plant are needed by consumers and health care personnel. Miroestrol, a potent and stable phytoestrogen in P. candollei, exhibited potential to be biomarker for quality control of P. candollei samples in research or industrial levels. Indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay (ELISA) for miroestrol determination was developed and validated by using polyclonal antibody from rabbit immunization. The polyclonal antibody recognized specifically to miroestrol, which exhibited cross-reactivity to deoxymiroestrol and isomiroestrol with 6.68% and 1.05%, respectively. The linearity range of measurement was 0.73–3000 ng mL−1, which coefficient of variation (CV) of both intra- and inter-plate determination was less than 5%. With spiked samples of known amount miroestrol, the percentages of recovery were 98.80–104.37% and 98.31–106.69% in P. candollei and its involved product samples, respectively. Validated ELISA was comparable with published HPLC method (R2 = 0.9996) (Yusakul et al. ) in samples with various miroestrol contents. For application, the P. candollei involved preparations contained miroestrol 0.695 ± 0.037–12.108 ± 0.285 μg g−1 dry wt. The developed ELISA was high performance for miroestrol determination, which could be applied for P. candollei quality control in research fields and industrial productions.