Estimation of serum albumin: a comparison of three methods.

Comparison of the methyl orange method of estimation of serum albumin with sodium sulfate fractionation and electrophoretic fractionation on paper showed that the sodium sulfate method may occasionally give much lower results than the other two. This may be due to loss of albumin on the precipitated globulins. Of the three, the methyl orange method tended to give the highest results, but was apparently unaffected by the presence of large amounts of abnormal proteins found in the serum of patients with multiple myelomatosis. In agreement with previous investigators, the dye-binding power of electrophoretically separated albumin was found to be greater than that of the (total) globulins.