Liu X, Turner B, Peyton C, Reisner B, Okorodudu AO, Hankins GD, Weissfeld AS, Petersen JR; American Society for Microbiology. General Meeting.

Abstr Gen Meet Am Soc Microbiol. 1997 May 4-8; 97: 581 (abstract no. V41).

University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX.

Toxoplasmosis is a disease caused by the protozoan T. gondii. Detection of recent infection, indicated by the presence of specific IgM antibodies to T. gondii, is especially important in pregnant women and immuno-compromised patients. We compared a new Toxo IgM assay on the Access_(Sanofi Diagnostics Pasteur, MN, USA), a random access instrument, with an ELISA (Zeus Scientific, NJ, USA) and an IFA (Gull Laboratories, Utah, USA). Over three months, 400 fresh, unfrozen clinical samples from pregnant women (n=308), HIV positive patients (n=41), and patients in whom infection with T. gondii was suspected (n=51) were assayed. All samples were analyzed within five days of sample draw. Samples were considered positive if greater than 140 AU/mL and greater than 1.1 OD for Access and Zeus, respectively. The IFA was considered positive only if fluorescence extended around the periphery of the T. gondii organism. The specificity of the Access assay was 99.2% compared to the ELISA and IFA. The specificity of the ELISA was 97.7% when compared to the IFA. Results that were discrepant between the ELISA and IFA were resolved using a third IFA method (Zeus). Once resolved, the specificity for the Access, Zeus ELISA, and Gull IFA were 99.2%, 97.9%, and 99.5%, respectively. Only one patient gave a positive result in all assay. We concluded that the Sanofi Access specificity is comparable to IFA, minimizing false positive results, and, being a random access instrument, would be preferable to use over batch methods.

Publication Types:

• Meeting Abstracts

Keywords:

• Animals
• Antibodies
• Biological Assay
• Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay
• Evaluation Studies
• Female
• Humans
• Pregnancy
• Sensitivity and Specificity
• Toxoplasma
• Toxoplasmosis
• Utah
• analysis
• methods

Other ID:

• 98928908

UI: 102235561

From Meeting Abstracts