Angiotensin Converting Enzyme
In vivo, ACE catalyses the conversion of Angiotensin I to Angiotensin II and inactivates bradykinin during regulating blood pressure via Renin-Angiotensin-System.

Elevated levels of serum ACE have been measured in patients suffering from various disorders. They often indicate a poor prognosis or rapid progression of the disease. Elevated serum ACE levels are reported in granulomatous-inflammatory diseases such as Sarcoidosis and Mixed-Connective-Tissue Disease (MTCD), Nephropathies associated with Diabetes and Glomerulonephritis, Cardiovascular diseases such as left ventricular hypertrophy, brain and myocardial infarction.
The Main application is Sarcoidosis. Other Areas of application are Chronic Berylliosis and monitoring of compliance under ACE inhibitor therapy.

The ACE kinetic Kit from BUHLMANN is a CE-certified complete kit providing ready to use Substrate and highly stable Calibrator and Controls, offering a maximum convenience and accuracy. Reconstituted Calibrator and Controls provided with the kits are stable for 6 months at 2-8°C. The substrate has an onboard-stability up to 3 months. Different package sizes are available (2x50, 100 and 1200 tests). CE-marked application notes are available for the most common clinical chemistry analyzers.

High Sensitive Methods
In cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) normal ACE activity is far below the detection limit of the ACE kinetic assay. BÜHLMANN offers now two alternatives to reliably detect even this low ACE activity. The  ACE high sensitive assay (kinetic assay; order code: KK-ACF) with a detection limit of 1 U/L and the ACE REA (radio enzymatic assay; order code: RK-ACD). Both assays can be used for serum and CSF samples.

Product Information

* Multilingual document [EN, DE, FR, IT, ES]

Sarcoidosis
Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease of unknown origin characterised by the formation of granulomas. The prevalence of this multisystem granulomatous disorder, which activates the immune system, varies between ethnic groups and geographic regions. In about 20% of the cases especially multi-organ involvement may become life-threatening. The chronic forms can last several years or even a life time.

Consequently, diagnostic tools are essential to closely monitor disease activity and to predict disease progression. ACE is valuable to assess the disease activity, especially in systemic Sarcoidosis. It is released by epitheloid cells and its serum level correlates significantly with the granuloma burden of the patient.

The positive predictive value of elevated ACE activity is estimated between 75-90%, the negative predicted value between 70-80%. An initial low ACE activity indicates a good prognosis.

Interresting Links:

NEJM - Review Article Sarcoidosis 2007

Health Information MayoClinic

Deutsche Sarcoidose Vereinigung e.V.