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Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, November 2008, p. 1723-1729, Vol. 15, No. 11
1071-412X/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/CVI.00257-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Validation of an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay for Diagnosis of Human Trichinellosis {triangledown}

Maria Angeles Gómez-Morales,1* Alessandra Ludovisi,1 Marco Amati,1 Simona Cherchi,1 Patrizio Pezzotti,2 and Edoardo Pozio1

Department of Infectious, Parasitic and Immunomediated Diseases, Istituto Superiore di Sanità,1 Agenzia di Sanità Pubblica, Rome, Italy2

Received 11 July 2008/ Returned for modification 13 August 2008/ Accepted 22 September 2008

Trichinellosis is a zoonotic disease caused by the consumption of raw or semiraw meat from different animals harboring Trichinella larvae in their muscles. Since there are no pathognomonic signs, diagnosis can be difficult; for this reason, serology is important. The objective of this study was to validate an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) using excretory/secretory antigens to detect anti-Trichinella immunoglobulin G antibodies in human sera. A total of 3,505 human serum samples were tested. A receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed. The accuracy of the test was determined by calculating the area under the curve, which was equal to 0.999, indicating high accuracy. The coefficient of variation calculated for data from four serum samples in eight working sessions was no higher than 5% for the positive sera or 14% for the negative sera. Moreover, the analysis of the differences in optical density between duplicates indicated a high repeatability for the ELISA. At the ROC optimized cutoff, the sensitivity and specificity of the test were, respectively, 99.2% and 90.6% (specificity of 95.6% when excluding the samples from multiparasitized persons from Tanzania). The validated ELISA showed good performance in terms of sensitivity, repeatability, and reproducibility, whereas the specificity was limited. These results suggest that this test is suitable for detecting anti-Trichinella antibodies in human sera for diagnostic purposes, whereas its use in epidemiological surveys could be questionable.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Infectious, Parasitic and Immunomediated Diseases, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, viale Regina Elena 299, 00161 Rome, Italy. Phone: 39 06 4990 3379. Fax: 39 06 4990 3561. E-mail: mariaangeles.gomezmorales{at}iss.it

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 30 September 2008.

Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, November 2008, p. 1723-1729, Vol. 15, No. 11
1071-412X/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/CVI.00257-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Gottstein, B., Pozio, E., Nockler, K. (2009). Epidemiology, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Control of Trichinellosis. Clin. Microbiol. Rev. 22: 127-145 [Abstract] [Full Text]  


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