Comparison of ‘real-time’ and immunometric RT-PCR: RNA interference of reverse transcriptase-PCR

We measured interleukin-6 (IL-6) mRNA in whole blood, using an immunometric reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (IRT-PCR) method and ‘real-time’ RT-PCR using the Roche LightCycler. Both methods showed similar precision, in terms of inter- and intra-assay variation, where a lower total RNA concentration was used at a relatively high ratio of (IL-6) mRNA to total RNA. However, the ‘real-time’ RT-PCR method showed a greater loss of accuracy at higher concentrations of total RNA.