Quantitation of gluten in gluten-free products is a great challenge as it is hindered by several factors including the lack of certified reference materials. To resolve this problem, our research group, in cooperation with other international experts, started a series of experiments with the goal of the production of a suitable gluten reference material. As a part of this research, several different wheat cultivars and their isolated gluten proteins were characterized by different methods, including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). However, we need to know the performance of the ELISA methods used for this special area of research. During the present work we investigated the accuracy and precision of two different ELISA methods for our own laboratory conditions and special sample matrices (wheat flours and gliadin isolate). We have found that the tested performance characteristics of the methods seem to be appropriate on a case-by-case basis, but the long-term measurement uncertainty is higher, which makes it difficult to evaluate the results obtained with the ELISA method for these types of samples.
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