Use of IgG Avidity test in case definitions of toxoplasmosis in pregnancy.

A survey network for congenital toxoplasmosis (TOXO-NET) was set up in December 1996 in Piedmont (Italy). Participants were asked to classify the infections in pregnant mothers and newborns by the criteria of the European Network on Congenital Toxoplasmosis published by Lebech in 1996. Because the IgG Avidity test is largely employed as a 2nd level test in toxoplasmosis diagnosis and it could be helpful to date infection, the co-ordinators of TOXO-NET suggested including it in the "case definition" of "probable" infection and "unlikely" infection.

[Combining indirect hemagglutination with the direct agglutination as a parameter for evaluating patients sent for serological verification of toxoplasmosis].

The importance that Toxoplasma gondii congenital infection may assume is still representing a stimulus for trying to improve Toxoplasmosis serological diagnosis; task, this one, which Laboratory is charged with, and that is often hard, particularly when we have to value the possibility of an infection in progress. With the purpose to complete the results obtained in a preceding work of ours, we have valued two among the most commonly used tests for Toxoplasmosis serodiagnosis, the AD (direct agglutination provided by BioMerieux) and the IHA (indirect haemoagglutination provided by Behring), together and separately, in order to make use of their coupling with major security and effectiveness, on the ground of the results obtained on two different groups of individuals, in the number of 125 for each group; for these groups it was possible to expect a different index of receptivity and a different percentage of recent or in progress infections. It was come out, as regards the IHAm a very good degree of assurance in trying to single out the past immunity, while this test wouldn't generally seem to be able to offer sufficient indications to distinguish the recent or in progress infection from past immunity, as it often declares, in fact, middle-high titres also in cases probably referable to the last mentioned situation.

[Urinary infections: observations on the frequency of microbial isolation at the hospital environment and its surroundings].

Numerous studies have been carried out to specify bacterial frequencies in the urinary tract infections. In such researches the prevalence of Gram negative bacterial species has generally emerged, the most part of these ones would be Enterobatteriaceae (and among them E. coli has a special prominent position); on the other hand several Authors have often found, among other bacterial groups (Gram positive bacteria, Pseudomonas etc.

[Toxoplasmosis: comparative serological diagnosis (direct agglutination, complement fixation, hemagglutination inhibition tests) in order to attempt to clarify the diverse periods of infection in man].

Large diffusion of human toxoplasmotic infection and consequent injuries that, sometimes, occur in pregnancy and to the newborn, have been and are principal stimulus to study and to set several diagnostic means to specify, directly or indirectly, acute infection and acquired immunity. Serological methods are, at least till now, the best diagnostic means; among these, we have selected 3 methods: IHA (Behring), CF (I.S.