Diagnosis of IgA nephropathy (IgAN): A sandwich assay focusing on aberrant glycosylation of serum IgA1 with WFA lectin

A group from Reagent Engineering, Protein Technology Group, Sysmex Corporation, Kobe 651-2271, Hyogo, Japan, etc. has reported about evaluation of serum WFA+-IgA1 as IgA nephropathy (IgAN) diagnostic marker.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9104065/

Authors have reported results of an automated sandwich immunoassay system for diagnosing IgA nephropathy (IgAN), using Wisteria floribunda agglutinin (WFA) lectin and anti-IgA1 monoclonal antibody focusing on aberrant glycosylation of IgA1.

The usefulness of WFA for the immunoassays was investigated by lectin microarray. A figure below shows the typical images of microarray results in HC and IgAN patients, and it was confirmed that the WFA signal increased significantly in IgA1 derived from IgAN patients compared with that in HCs.

Unfortunately, the results seemed to be disappointing from a view point of diagnostic assay, i.e., Sensitivity = 66% and Specificity = 62%.