Evaluation of recombinant leptospiral antigen LipL41 in enzyme- linked immunosorbent assay and latex agglutination test for serodiagnosis of canine leptospirosis

Leptospirosis is an important global veterinary health problem caused by spirochetes belonging to the genus Leptospira. Leptospires are ubiquitous in nature, and therefore able to adapt to both the ambient environment and the renal tubules of chronically infected reservoir hosts. Microscopic agglutination test (MAT) remains a specialized test, which is not generally performed in the routine diagnostic laboratories. In an effort to develop new diagnostic tests to achieve high sensitivity, the focus is mainly on the outer membrane proteins. LipL41 is one among the immunogenic outer membrane proteins that is highly conserved among pathogenic species of Leptopspira. The recombinant based outer membrane protein antigen LipL41 was evaluated for use in the diagnosis of canine leptospirosis by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (IgG-ELISA) and latex agglutination test (LAT). The sensitivity and specificity of the developed assays were analyzed with the microscopic agglutination test (MAT) using 221 canine serum samples. The sensitivity and specificity of the ELISA were 83.33% and 93.07%, and the sensitivity and specificity of the latex agglutination test were 95.83% and 96.04% respectively. The assays proved to be as sensitive, specific and accurate as the standard microscopic agglutination test (MAT). key words: enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, latex agglutination test, leptospirosis, dogs, rLipL41