Breed with confidence.
Now test with just one drop of plasma.
Employ our economical and easy to use Quick P4 Equine Progesterone™ test kit to determine where the mare is in her progesterone cycle. Our Equine Cube Reader generates a numerical result for progesterone in minutes which can confirm if costly Regu-Mate® therapy remains necessary. In the event of an unsuccessful breeding, our kit will allow you to rebreed sooner by detecting pregnancy earlier.
Benefits.
Our diagnostic products provide important data on the equine reproductive cycle including:
- Our Equine Cube Reader can be used with Immuno-Chek G kits to get numerical test results in just 10 minutes.
- Easy to use, on-site testing.
- Result lines are visible to the eye for easy checking.
- Our test kits are stable at room temperature and have long shelf life.
Why Progesterone?
Progesterone levels are key to determining many aspects of a mare’s reproductive cycle such as what stage the mare is in the cycle, pregnancy diagnosis, embryo viability, and more. Because of the time required and difficulty in getting accurate progesterone results from a laboratory, equine practitioners typically resort to extensive progesterone supplementation rather than planning actions based on knowledge of actual progesterone levels present.
- Numerical progesterone result developed for fresh equine plasma or whole blood.
- Avoid excess Regu-Mate® supplementation.
- Supplement Regu-Mate® with respect to known progesterone level.
Laboratory Validation
The Equine Quick Progesterone test is a Lateral flow test with two specific monoclonal antibodies to bind progesterone. To run the test, you add one drop of plasma, 3 drops of push buffer and wait 15 minutes. Using the cube reader, you will obtain a numerical value as your results. When the test has developed - you will see a red "test and control line." If there is no control line, the test is not valid.
Targetvet/Biometallics optimizes every lot of Equine Quick P4 using 1 hour to 3 days old Equine samples. The samples are sent to Cornell (RIA assay) and Texas A & M (ChL assay) laboratories for comparison analysis.
After running and analyzing numerous samples, the sensitivity and specificity of the test were determined to be 93.5% and 95.2% respectively.
Interpretation and accuracy with the Cube Reader.
Table 1. Quick P4 vs. lab results for pregnant mares.
| Lateral Flow Quick P4 (ng/ml) |
RIA Cornell Lab (ng/ml) |
RIA BET Lab (ng/ml) |
Horse ID | Days Pregnant | Owner Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.6 | 6.5 | 5.5 | "Cat" | 95 | |
| 6.4 | 6.0 | 5.5 | "Remedy" | 24 | |
| 5.7 | 8.8 | 66 | 31 | No supplementation | |
| 3.3 | 8.7 | 6.5 | 90 | 48 | No supplementation |
| 15.0 | 4.8 | 4.5 | 21 | 250 | No supplementation |
| 9.6 | 30.8 | 25.2 | 102 | 137 | No supplementation |
| 3.7 | < 0.06 | "Martha" | 244 | No supplementation (lab is wrong, mare is pregnant) |
|
| 4.6 | 5.7 | 88 | 282 | Regu-Mate® | |
| 4.0 | 3.9 | 110 | 310 | Regu-Mate® | |
| 3.2 | 7.1 | 115 | 249 | Regu-Mate® | |
| 9.3 | 16.6 | 18.7 | 82 | 66 | Regu-Mate® + P4 Oil |
| 5.5 | 9.7 | 8.8 | 54 | 31 | Regu-Mate® + P4 Oil |
| 4.7 | 5.3 | 105 | 190 | Regu-Mate® + P4 Oil |
Table 2. Quick P4 vs. lab results for non-pregnant mares.
| Lateral Flow Quick P4 (ng/ml) |
RIA Lab (ng/ml) |
Horse ID | Reproductive Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.1 | 0.6 | 866 | Not Pregnant |
| 5.6 | 11.3 | Y46 | Not Pregnant |
| 2.5 | 0.2 | "Vodka" | Not Pregnant |
| 0.2 | 0.5 | 32 | Foaled 3 days prior |
Notes:
- Lateral flow test has 2 specific monoclonal antibodies to bind P4 in a sandwich assay.
- RIA lab tests use a single polyclonal antibody to bind P4 - in competitive assay - this results in less specific binding
- RIA lab results may give higher progesterone values which include both progesterone and progesterone metabolites.
Precision and Reliability of the Cube Reader in Progesterone Testing
The optical electronic sensor of the Cube reader takes multiple high resolution scans of test and control line intensities to get accurate results. Using the test and control line intensities and the mathematical information (standard curve) on the calibration card, the Cube Reader calculates and displays the Progesterone concentration (ng/mL).
- The % CV of different readings on the same cube is 1-3 %
- The % CV between different cubes is < 3 %.
- The % CV with same sample on different cassettes is < 3 %
The progesterone concentration of 72 mare samples were compared using Equine Quick P4(LF) and Cornell (RIA) numerical results. As you can see from the results, the Equine Quick P4 identifies the free progesterone on the serum samples correctly. In comparison, the Lab Result of Horse ID Martha was completely wrong. Martha was 244 days pregnant the lab concentration was <0.06 ng/mL progesterone and the Equine quick P4 concentration was 3.7ng/mL. Martha was not on any supplement and she maintained the pregnancy and had a healthy foal.
Equine Quick Progesterone could be used for:
- Pregnancy determination
- Using Quick P4 with Regu-mate
- For Embryo Transfer
TargetVet/Biometallics has been selling the Equine Quick P4 for over three years. We have made some changes (requiring plasma instead of serum samples) to further improve the test over the years. Our customers - Veterinary clinics and farms are using the Equine Quick P4 with great success by getting needed progesterone concentration values on site, and consequently can start treatment immediately if needed.
Link to the entire Studies 72 mare samples table
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