Development of a Specific and Sensitive Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay as an Diagnostic Tool for Detection of Bartonella henselae Antibodies in Human Serum.

causes cat scratch disease and several other clinical entities. Infections with are frequently occurring; however, the infection is only rarely diagnosed, mainly due to a lack of knowledge in the medical community. Microscopic immunofluorescence assays (IFA) are widely used for the serodiagnosis of infections but are laborious and time-consuming, and interpretation is subjective. An easy and reliable method for the serological diagnosis of infections is needed to overcome the shortcomings of the current IFA. Here, we report the development of an ELISA detecting human anti- antibodies from serum samples. By separating the water-insoluble fraction of Houston-1 via ion-exchange chromatography, 16 subfractions were generated and tested for immunoreactivity via line blotting. One particular fraction (fraction 24) was selected and spotted on ELISA plates using an industrial production platform. By use of well-characterized human sera from the strictly quality-controlled serum library of the German National Consiliary Laboratory for infections, the sensitivity of this ELISA was 100% for PCR-proven infections and 76% for clinically suspected infections at a specificity of 93%. This ELISA is therefore a reliable high-throughput method allowing the serodiagnosis of infections.