Talk:Oligoclonal band

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Neurology This article is within the scope of WikiProject Neurology. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the talk page.
Start This page has been rated as Start-Class on the quality assessment scale
Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance assessment scale
WikiProject Medicine This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the doctor's mess.
Start This page has been rated as Start-Class on the quality assessment scale
Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance assessment scale

It has taken me quite a while to understand the first sentence in the article:

"Oligoclonal bands are about two to five bands of immunoglobulins on protein electrophoresis of cerebrospinal fluid"

I'm not a medical person but I'm not below average intelligence, so I figure that if it takes me quite a while to figure out what the sentence means, others will be in a similar position.

I'm in the unfortunate position of having had the procedure which shows up the oligoclonal bands so I'm also interested in the subject matter.

I propose adding a "simpler" version to the end of the first paragraph, something along the lines of:

In layman's terms; a patient has a lumbar puncture performed, which removes
some of their cerebrospinal fluid.  A method of analysing the fluid (the method 
is called protein electrophoresis) is performed, a possible result of which is 
that about two to five bands of immunoglobulins (known as oligoclonal bands) 
are evident.

Would this be OK to add in? I think it makes it easier to understand but then again, I was never particularly hot at any of the science subjects.

Mkns 20:07, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Staining

The entry does not explain how the staining of the gel is performed. Since this has a direct effect on possible downstream analyses (e.g. mass spectrometry or a quantitative interpretation) I'd consider this helpful to state somewhere in the entry.