Prenatal diagnosis of congenital Chagas' disease (American trypanosomiasis).

The prenatal diagnosis of congenital transmission of Chagas' disease in a pregnant woman with the indeterminate form of the disease is reported. Sonography revealed fetal hydrops at 31 weeks' gestation. Anti-Trypanosoma cruzi IgM and IgG antibodies were negative in the fetal blood sampled by cordocentesis, but T.

Immunoglobulin M (IgM)-glycoinositolphospholipid enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay: an immunoenzymatic assay for discrimination between patients with acute toxoplasmosis and those with persistent parasite-specific IgM antibodies.

In the present study we developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to measure immunoglobulin M (IgM) specific for glycoinositolphospholipids (GIPL) derived from tachyzoite membrane (IgM-GIPL ELISA). The sensitivity and specificity of the assay were compared with those of commercially available Toxoplasma-specific IgM serological tests, namely, immunofluorescence assay (IFA) with fixed tachyzoites and capture ELISA employing tachyzoite extracts. Our results show that all patients with acute toxoplasmosis, as determined by clinical data and conventional serological tests, were also positive by the IgM-GIPL ELISA.