Detection of a Trichinella-specific IgE in human trichinellosis – the creation of a new test

Trichinellosis is a parasitic disease of humans caused by nematodes from the genus Trichinella, predominantly Trichinella spiralis. If Trichinella infection is suspected based on an epidemiological link and clinical criteria within defined period of time, then finding of Trichinella-specific antibodies in the examined sera provides definitive proof of the establishment of infection. Detection of a Trichinella-specific IgE that could precede, coincide or follow IgG seroconversion not only confirms the existence of infection, but could narrow the time frame in which the infection occurred to a year or even less. Since there are no commercially available tests for monitoring the presence of a Trichinella-specific IgE during the course of the disease, the present work was aimed at establishing this kind of ELISA test. The specificity and sensitivity of hitherto described Trichinella-specific IgE ELISAs are not sufficiently satisfactory; the two major problems are poor discrimination between positive and negative results and cross reactivity with sera of patients with different parasitic diseases. In this study, a Trichinella-specific IgE capture ELISA was developed that overcomes the problems of specificity and sensitivity and enables the determination of Trichinella-specific IgE.