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ScienceIsSexy420 t1_izokqqk wrote

There are various methods to do so, depending on which specific hormone or biomarker you are interested in studying. I used to work in a hospital lab, and now I do clinical chemistry research. What are you interested in learning about?

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Xenos-Asveyac OP t1_izq0wyz wrote

I'm mainly interested in learning about oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine. Thank you for responding so quickly!

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ScienceIsSexy420 t1_izr0ptu wrote

Neurotransmitters are difficult, and testing things inside of the blood brain barrier (BBB) is notoriously difficult. While we can conduct blood tests of all three of those molecules, serum levels (that's what we call the blood after the red blood cells have been separated from the rest of the blood) do not correlate to levels on the other side of the BBB. That being said, the method for testing it would be either spectrophotometry or liquid chromatography mass spectroscopy (LCMS) depending on the medical facility and it's equipment/age.

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ShadowEllipse t1_izomgh2 wrote

One technique used is immunoassay. We can use like an antibody or antigen that is highly selective in binding to the required hormone or peptide. This can be a radioactive isotope or a fluorescent one. We have particle counting technology which uses scattered laser light is used to count the particles present in a given area.

I don't really specialise in biochemistry since I'm just a medstudent so take it with a grain of salt because there might be a few errors.

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ScienceIsSexy420 t1_izooxs2 wrote

There's also spectrophotometry, LCMS, MALDI, ELISA, radioimmunoassay, and many other kind of immunoassays :)

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ShadowEllipse t1_izp26c7 wrote

Yeah. I only know like ELISA and radioimmunoassay from what you mentioned. I assume I know a bit more but I cant remember any of them.

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