Advantage of Eu3+-Doped Polystyrene Microspheres Compared with Colloidal Gold Used in Immunochromatographic Assays for the Detection of Melamine in Milk

Colloidal gold and Eu3+-doped fluorescent microspheres were applied as labels to develop the immunochromatographic strips for detecting melamine in milk. Under the optimized condition, the visual detection limit of colloidal gold-immunochromatographic test strip (ICTS) was 150 mu g/L of melamine in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), although the visual detection limit of fluorescent nanoparticles (FN)-ICTS was 75 mu g/L in PBS. As thermal acceleration test, FN-ICTS could be stored at 37 degrees C for at least 11 d before sample testing, but the color of the lines on colloidal gold-ICTS faded away after 7-d storage. The visual result of FN-ICTS was more stable than that of colloidal gold-ICTS, and the fluorescence intensity of the line on FN-ICTS could be maintained up to 30 d at 22 degrees C after sample testing. Once the immunochromatographic strips were used to detect melamine in milk, no negative effect of milk components on the performance of FN-ICTS was identified, whereas the performance of colloidal gold-ICTS was significantly influenced by milk matrix.