Silva Eduardo S, Schoone Gerard J, Gontijo Celia M F, Brazil Reginaldo P, Pacheco Raquel S, Schallig Henk D F H
Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais, Fundação Educacional de Divinópolis, Divinópolis, MG, Brazil.
Kinetoplastid Biol Dis. 2005 Jun 14;4:4. doi: 10.1186/1475-9292-4-4.
The direct agglutination test (DAT) has proved to be a very important sero-diagnostic tool combining high levels of intrinsic validity and ease of performance. Otherwise, fast agglutination screening test (FAST) utilises only one serum dilution making the test very suitable for the screening of large populations.
We have tested FAST and DAT for the detection anti-Leishmania antibodies in serum samples from patients with American visceral (AVL) and cutaneous leishmaniases (ACL) in Minas Gerais State, Brazil. The DAT on serum and blood samples of confirmed AVL patients found all samples positive at a serum dilution of > or = 1:800. This dilution was subsequently used as cut off value in the study. The blood and serum samples of these confirmed patients could also be clearly read in FAST using a 1:100 dilution with the same high sensitivity. DAT and FAST were not able to detect significant amounts of antibodies in samples from ACL patients and are not suitable for the diagnosis of this manifestation of the disease.
We suggest that both DAT and FAST are very practical diagnostic tools for the sero-diagnosis of AVL under rural conditions as both serological tests do not require sophisticated equipment, a cold chain and are very simple to perform.
直接凝集试验（DAT）已被证明是一种非常重要的血清学诊断工具，具有较高的内在效度且操作简便。此外，快速凝集筛查试验（FAST）仅使用一种血清稀释度，这使得该试验非常适合对大量人群进行筛查。
我们对来自巴西米纳斯吉拉斯州患有美洲内脏利什曼病（AVL）和皮肤利什曼病（ACL）患者血清样本中的抗利什曼原虫抗体检测进行了FAST和DAT测试。对确诊的AVL患者的血清和血液样本进行DAT检测时，发现所有样本在血清稀释度≥1:800时均呈阳性。该稀释度随后被用作本研究的临界值。这些确诊患者的血液和血清样本在FAST中使用1:100稀释度时也能以相同的高灵敏度清晰读取。DAT和FAST无法在ACL患者的样本中检测到大量抗体，不适用于该疾病这一表现形式的诊断。
我们认为，DAT和FAST都是在农村条件下对AVL进行血清学诊断的非常实用的诊断工具，因为这两种血清学检测都不需要复杂的设备、冷链，且操作非常简单。
