Efficiency of two commercial kits in serodiagnosis of leptospiral uveitis.

PURPOSE Uveitis is an important complication of systemic leptospirosis that can occur months to years after systemic infection. The gold standard technique Microscopic Agglutination Test (MAT) is less sensitive and more complicated. All the commercial kits currently available are for early detection of acute systemic leptospiral infection. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of two commercial kits in serodiagnosis of leptospiral uveitis, which is a late manifestation. MATERIALS AND METHODS Serum samples from leptospiral uveitis patients 20 MAT positive, 20 MAT negative, 15 non-leptospiral uveitis patients, 20 systemic leptospiral infected patients and 21 controls were selected. These samples were tested for the presence of leptospiral IgM antibodies by (i) MAT using a panel of 20 serovars, (ii) LEPTO IgM MICROLISA (J.Mitra & Co.Pvt. Ltd, India) and (iii) Leptocheck (Zephyr Biomedicals, India). The statistical analysis was carried out using stata 11.0. RESULTS Total of 96 samples were tested with two commercial kits, Lepto IgM MICROLISA and Leptocheck. The sensitivity and specificity of Lepto IgM MICROLISA was 60% and 55% and Leptocheck was 80% and 59% respectively in comparison to MAT. In comparison to clinical diagnosis the sensitivity of IgM Microlisa was 55%, Leptocheck 70% and specificity of IgM MICROLISA was 58.33% and leptocheck was 69.44%. CONCLUSION Commercial kits though sensitive and specific for systemic leptospirosis, have limited diagnostic capacity for leptospiral uveitis. Therefore it is essential to develop an inhouse serodiagnostic method specific for leptospiral uveitis patients using local leptospiral isolates.