Talk:Oligoclonal band

Various
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)

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.

The oligoclonal bands consist of immunoglobulins secreted by plasma cells (B cells). They are called oligoclonal because there are several clones of B-cells secreting them; when they are only present in CSF, it´s assumed that they have been produced inside the central nervous system (CNS); if they are also present in serum (mirror pattern), they are not specific of CNS, so they are produced outside (CNS is separated from the rest of the body by different barriers). The presense of oligoclonal bands only in CSF confirms, in the appropriate cinical situation, multiple sclerosis, but they are not specific of this disease.

A monoclonal band is an immunoglobulin secreted by a single clone of B-cells (a clone is the set of cells deriving from one single cell, all producing the same immunoglobulin when applied to B-cells) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.126.10.220 (talk) 09:17, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Restoration
I have tried to restore the article after several editors including anons have tried to improve it. I did so without simply reverting to an old version, trying to build on what has been added instead. A decent revision to compare against is the one of 14 February 2008. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:43, 7 June 2009 (UTC)