Molecular weight determination of Fasciola antigens specific for diagnosis of acute fascioliasis.

Acute human fascioliasis depends in its diagnosis on detecting specific antibodies in the sera of patients. It was observed that both somatic fraction I and crude E/S products of adult Fasciola gigantica worm gave sensitive and specific results. Using IgM ELISA, the cut off O.D was 0.6 and 0.3 nm. and the accuracy was 93% and 98% for the two antigens respectively. Determination of the molecular weight of these two antigens was undertaken by SDS-PAGE. The molecular weight of the somatic fraction I ranged from 17.5 to 43.9 kd, that of the crude E/S products ranged from 12.5 to 14.7 kd. These results were compored with those of previous works performed on antigens of F. hepatica.