Modification on Direct Agglutination Antigen Preparation for Simplified Sero-Diagnosis of Human and Canine Visceral Leishmaniasis

BACKGROUND Visceral leishmaniasis is systematic serous parasitic disease with public health importance. Zoonotic form of visceral leishmaniasis is wide spread in Mediterranean basin and South America regions. Direct agglutination test (DAT) is an accurate, reliable and non-expensive serological test for the diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis in human and canines but the antigen preparation involves some limitations. This study aimed to compare the conventional production of DAT antigen with our modified DAT antigen and then assessed on human and dog pooled sera. METHODS Conventional DAT antigen has been prepared at the School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences and some modifications were carried out on it, which named as modified DAT antigen. Three positive and one negative human and dog pooled serum were separately used for the comparison of modified DAT with conventional DAT antigen batches with one-month interval for a period of 9 months. RESULTS A good concordance was observed between modified DAT compared to conventional DAT antigens for the detection of visceral leishmaniasis on human (100%) and dog (94.4%) pooled sera, respectively. CONCLUSION Since the modified DAT antigen could be reduced the preparation time from 3 days to several hours and a good degree of agreement was found between modified DAT and convention DAT antigen batches, it can be used as a simple and easy tool for screening and serodiagnosis of human and canine L. infantum infection.