Measuring T-cell function in animal models of tuberculosis by ELISPOT.

Enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) was originally developed from an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect and measure the frequency of individual cells that produce cytokines in response to antigenic stimulation. ELISPOT assay is more sensitive than the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay or intracellular cytokine staining. Increased sensitivity of ELISPOT is particularly advantageous when studying T-cell-mediated responses in Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection because antigen specific T-cells can occur at a low frequency in vivo. This method has been successfully used to analyze M. tuberculosis immune responses in humans in addition to murine and nonhuman primate models of tuberculosis.