[Evaluation of IHA, ELISA and Western Blot tests in diagnosis of pulmonary cystic hidatidosis].

Pulmonary cystic hidatidosis caused by the larval stages of Echinococcus granulosus is a common parasitic disease in Turkey and throughout the world. In this study IHA, ELISA and Western Blot (WB) tests were performed with a panel of 59 sera from 31 surgically confirmed pulmonary cystic hidatidosis patients, 18 patients with pulmonary disease other than cystic hidatidosis and 10 healthy individual. The overall sensitivity of the IHA, ELISA and WB tests used for the serodiagnosis of pulmonary cystic hidatidosis were found as 96.7%, 87.1%, 100% and the specificities were 82.2%, 89.2% and %85.7, respectively. Using the WB test 8-12 kDa, 24 kDa and 124 kDa bands were detected as valuable for surgically confirmed patients' sera. One or more of these bands were also detected in sera of four patients with other pulmonary diseases false-positively. In conclusion conventional serologic test like IHA and ELISA is valuable in diagnosis of pulmonary cystic hidatidosis, also evaluation of some specific bands in WB would contribute to the diagnosis.