A distinctive Western blot pattern to recognize Trichinella infections in humans and pigs.

Trichinellosis is a zoonotic disease caused by parasites of the genus Trichinella, which have a cosmopolitan distribution. For diagnostic purposes, a confirmatory test for ELISA-positive human and pig sera such as Western blotting is required, due to the high number of ELISA false positive sera. The objective of this study was to identify the Trichinella-specific antigens most frequently recognized by sera from Trichinella-infected humans and pigs, so as to define a distinctive pattern of Trichinella infection in sera from infected hosts using Western blots which allow false positive sera to be distinguished from true positive sera.