Comparative antibody study for antigen detection in urine specimens for diagnosis of blastomycosis using a competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay

Diagnosis of blastomycosis is often done using a combination of clinical signs and cytologic or histopathologic identification of the organism, Blastomyces dermatitidis, from infected tissues. However, these methods are time consuming, invasive, and still lead to misdiagnosis. A competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) can be used for detection of B. dermatitidis antigens, which are present in urine specimens of infected patients. The current study evaluates the use of various antibodies for detection of antigen in dog urine specimens, to provide a better diagnosis of blastomycosis in the future. Our results show that different antibodies against B. dermatitidis produce various sensitivities for antigen detection. The most realistic antibodies for immunodiagnostic tests would be antibodies that can be obtained in larger quantities, i.e. vaccination using a yeast lysate in a laboratory setting. We found that these antibodies produce a comparable and reliable result to that of antibodies obtained from an infected patient.