Evaluation of a commercial immunochromatographic assay for the serologic diagnosis of tularemia

Abstract Tularemia is an infection caused by Francisella tularensis with a worldwide distribution in the northern hemisphere and diverse clinical manifestations. Serology plays an important role in the diagnosis of tularemia. A commercially available immunochromatographic assay (ICA) for the serolog...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Diagnostic microbiology and infectious disease 2012-09, Vol.74 (1), p.1-5
Main Authors: KILIC, Selçuk, CELEBI, Bekir, YESILYURT, Murat
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agglutination Tests - methods
Bacteriological Techniques - methods
Biological and medical sciences
Francisella tularensis - isolation & purification
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Immunochromatographic assay
Immunochromatography - methods
Infectious Disease
Infectious diseases
Internal Medicine
Medical sciences
Microagglutination test
Microbiology
Sensitivity and Specificity
Serology
Tularemia
Tularemia - diagnosis
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Abstract Tularemia is an infection caused by Francisella tularensis with a worldwide distribution in the northern hemisphere and diverse clinical manifestations. Serology plays an important role in the diagnosis of tularemia. A commercially available immunochromatographic assay (ICA) for the serologic diagnosis of tularemia (VIRapid Tularemia, Vircell, Granada, Spain) was evaluated, and the performance was compared with that of the current standard, the microagglutination test (MA). A panel of 221 sera from 109 cases of tularemia was tested as well as 236 sera from normal individuals or individuals with other infectious or autoimmune diseases. The ICA demonstrated 91.5% ( κ = 0.91) agreement with the reference method (MA) and gave an overall sensitivity of 99.3% and a specificity of 94.6%. No cross-reactivity was observed in the ICA with serum samples from normal individuals and patients with autoimmune diseases and bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections, although 4 of 50 patients with brucellosis demonstrated positive results in the ICA. The performance of ICA was simple, and it requires no specialized equipment. The ease of use and significantly high sensitivity and specificity of ICA make it a good choice for diagnostic testing and a valuable field test to support a presumptive diagnosis of tularemia in remote areas.
ISSN:0732-8893
1879-0070
DOI:10.1016/j.diagmicrobio.2012.05.030