Campylobacter jejuni antibody in patients with diarrhoea and asymptomatic individuals in Lagos, Nigeria.

Seventy patients with acute diarrhoea and sixty asymptomatic children in Lagos, Nigeria were screened for complement fixing and agglutinating antibodies to Campylobacter jejuni in wells of microtitre plates using automatic microtitre pipettes. Out of the seventy patients with acute diarrhoea, 55 (78.6%) had complement fixing antibody, while 48 (68.5%) had agglutinating antibody in their sera. Twenty-nine (48.3%) and 21 (35%) out of the sixty asymptomatic children screened had complement fixing and agglutinating antibody respectively. Generally 84 (64.6%) of 130 children (both symptomatic and asymptomatic) had antibody to C. jejuni in their sera. The difference in the incidence rate between the symptomatics and asymptomatic is not statistically significant. The result suggest an antibody response to C. jejuni among children with diarrhoea, indicating that most of the diarrhoea cases in our environment may be due to Campylobacter but the successful demonstration of antibody response to C. jejuni among asymptomatic individuals may also suggest that even "normal" individuals have in their sera, antibody that can agglutinate C. jejuni in Nigeria. Use of antibody responses alone to C. jejuni in the diagnosis of C. jejuni infections in Nigeria should therefore be interpreted with caution.