Sharon, there is a current scale for immunostaining intensity.  It is expressed as a fraction, with the numerator being a number from 1-4 describing the intensity of the primary stain and the denominator being a number from 1-4 describing the background intensity.  For example, an optimal stain would read 4/1, meaning it has a strong primary stain (4) and absolute minimal background (1), and the next best stain would be a 3/1, and so forth.  Usually any background that is over 1 is unacceptable, so even a 4/2, which would show good strong staining of the primary antibody but slightly higher than normal background is unacceptable.  This is the only scoring of immunostaining that I am aware of.  To show you a sample of our scoring of stains chart based on different pretreatments of antibodies, check this link:  http://www.cellmarque.com/2000/Pages/pretreatmentcomparison.html 

I hope that this helps.

Jeff Gordon
Cell Marque Corp.
1-800-665-7284, Ext. 12

-----Original Message-----
From: Sharon E Willman [mailto:sharon.willman@bms.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 1:23 PM
To: histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: [Histonet] (Histonet) Immunostaining Scale


Hi,
My Pathologist would like to know if there is a scale for
determining intensity of immuno stains.  For example (1-5) and
what is the criteria for determing this.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Thanks,
Sharon Willman


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