RPHA (passive hemagglutination reaction) is a method for determining antibodies in blood serum, based on the ability of red blood cells coated with antibodies to stick to each other.
The essence of the method is as follows: serum containing an antigen that can bind to antibodies on the surface of red blood cells is added to red blood cells coated with antibodies. If antibodies are present in the serum, they bind to the antigen on the surface of the red blood cells, causing them to stick together. In this case, an agglutinate (a collection of red blood cells) is formed, which can be seen visually.
RPGA is widely used in medicine for the diagnosis of infectious diseases such as hepatitis, syphilis, tuberculosis, malaria and others. This method can also be used to determine the presence of antibodies in the blood after vaccination or illness.
One of the advantages of RPGA is its high sensitivity and specificity, which allows you to quickly and accurately determine the presence of antibodies in serum. In addition, this method does not require a large amount of material for analysis, which makes it convenient for use in the field.