Solitary Plasmacytoma of the Breast: A Case of an Uncommon Breast Neoplasm

Figure 1

An example of protein electrophoresis seen in a patient with a monoclonal gammopathy. In addition to the normal tall spike for albumin, there is another tall spike. The red line in the gamma region of the graph indicates this abnormal spike. Electrophoresis is useful to determine how much monoclonal protein there is, but not the type. Serum immunofixation electrophoresis (SIFE) is used to determine the isotype of the M-protein. It can further identify the type of light chains (κ or λ) and heavy chains (γ, α, μ, δ, or ε) that make up the immunoglobulin.