Use of cerebrospinal fluid enzyme immunoassay for diagnosis of neurosyphilis.

Neurosyphilis is a difficult clinical stage of syphilis as there is no ideal method for diagnosis and workup requires lumbar puncture which may sometimes provide ambiguous results especially in HIV co-infected patients. Enzyme immunoassay is a widely used screening test for syphilis in serum, but its test performance was not well studied in cerebrospinal fluid. To examine the diagnostic performance of cerebrospinal fluid-enzyme immunoassay (CSF-EIA) in neurosyphilis, we conducted a prospective study for two years.

Comparison of intracellular cytokine flow cytometry and an enzyme immunoassay for evaluation of cellular immune response to active tuberculosis.

A prospective cross-sectional blinded study of 28 patients (21 male and 7 female patients; mean age, 44 years) with suspected active tuberculosis (TB) attending a TB and chest clinic is described. Blood was taken for immune cell enumeration, a whole-blood enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for the detection of gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) by the QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT-G) assay, and intracellular cytokine flow cytometry (ICC) analysis; and sputum was simultaneously taken for bacteriological culture for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Twelve healthy subjects were included as controls.