Coagglutination for diagnosis of bacterial infection.

The rapid diagnosis of infectious diseases is important for the confirmation of diagnosis and therapeutic considerations. In some life-threatening instances like meningitis, an early diagnosis will facilitate appropriate intervention. Conventional methods like culture for diagnosis are considered standard and reliable but the handicap is the delay, usually around 48 hours, before confirmative results are obtained. Moreover, these methods are expensive and not all laboratories in developing countries are competent. The concept of rapid diagnosis is recent. A test to be called a rapid diagnostic method must fulfil two criteria. It must achieve diagnosis early in the course of illness and must be quick to perform, the resuits being available say, in few minutes to few hours. Rapid diagnostic methods inelude immunological and non-immunological techniques. The non-immunological techniques include among others gas liquid chromatography to detect microbial metabolites directly in body fluids and the use of complementary deoxyribonucleic acid (cDNA) probes for detecting micro-