Production of chicken yolk IgY to sulfamethazine: comparison with rabbit antiserum IgG

Sulfamethazine was used as target analyte to produce IgY from chicken aiming to compare the performance of these two antibodies in term of yield, titer, sensitivity, selectivity and matrix effect under parallel conditions. The results showed that the total yield of IgY produced by one chicken during 43 weeks' experimental period was about 15 g. This output is much more than IgG (150 mg from one rabbit). Besides, IgY titers increased during 10 weeks and remained stable over 30 weeks. The peak titer of IgY was 1:2¹⁸. As the antibody titer rose, the sensitivity was increased. For IgG, the maximum titer was observed to be 1:2²³. In addition, both IgY and IgG were highly sensitive. The limits of detection were 0.54 ng/mL for IgY and 0.24 ng/mL for IgG. These results indicated that the IgY potentially provides a practical and ethical alternative to IgG in veterinary drug residue immunoanalysis.