modification on direct agglutination antigen preparation for simplified sero-diagnosis of human and canine visceral leish¬maniasis

background: visceral leishmaniasis is systematic serous parasitic disease with pub­lic health importance. zoonotic form of visceral leishmaniasis is wide spread in mediterranean basin and south america regions. direct agglutination test (dat) is an accurate, reliable and non-expensive serological test for the diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis in human and canines but the antigen preparation involves some limita­tions. this study aimed to compare the conventional production of dat anti­gen with our modified dat antigen and then assessed on human and dog pooled sera. methods: conventional dat antigen has been prepared at the school of public health, tehran university of medical sciences and some modifications were car­ried out on it, which named as modified dat antigen. three positive and one nega­tive human and dog pooled serum were separately used for the comparison of modified dat with conventional dat antigen batches with one-month interval for a period of 9 months. results: a good concordance was observed between modified dat compared to conventional dat antigens for the detection of visceral leishmaniasis on human (100%) and dog (94.4%) pooled sera, respectively. conclusion: since the modified dat antigen could be reduced the preparation time from 3 days to several hours and a good degree of agreement was found between modified dat and convention dat antigen batches, it can be used as a simple and easy tool for screening and serodiagnosis of human and canine l. infan­tum infection.