Evaluation of recombinant leptospiral surface antigen (Lsa27) lipoprotein for serodiagnosis of human leptospirosis by latex agglutination test.

Purpose: Leptospirosis has wide clinical presentations often mimicking other illnesses, thus rapid and simple diagnostics will have facilitated the initial patient management and therapy compared to other inaccessible and laborious tests/assays.

Method: In this study, the sensitized latex beads coated with purified recombinant outer membrane (OM)-leptospiral surface antigen (Lsa27) lipoprotein of pathogenic Leptospira was evaluated as a diagnostic antigen in latex agglutination test (LAT) for the detection of anti-leptospiral antibodies in the human sera. The prepared rLsa27 latex beads were evaluated with the confirmed microscopic agglutination test (MAT) reactive (at 1:50) Leptospira-specific positive (n = 42) and non-reactive negative (n = 80) sera from human cases suspected of leptospirosis with the history of pyrexia of unknown origin.

Evaluation of an in-house LipL32 polymerase chain reaction for diagnosis of leptospirosis and its correlation with various serological diagnostic techniques.

Background: Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease of ubiquitous distribution. During rainy seasons, in spring and summer and also during harvest times, the risk of leptospirosis increases as there are chances of frequent contact with infected rat population which is common in Karnataka as farming is a main source of income to the people here. There is a paucity of data regarding the prevalent serovars from Karnataka.