National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS)
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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Leptospirosis is becoming an increasingly significant public health problem, particularly in tropical developing countries. The clinical diagnosis of leptospirosis is difficult due to the varied presentation of the symptoms of the disease and thus laboratory methods are needed to confirm it. Serology becomes an important diagnostic tool from the moment antibodies appear in detectable quantities in blood. Microscopic Agglutination Test(MAT) is the gold standard serological test but a single positive titre is, not diagnostic due to asymptomatic, past infection and cross reacting antibodies to other illness and should ideally be performed on paired serum samples and a demonstration of four-fold rise in titre of antibodies is essential to confirm current illness. The aim of the present study is to confirm the current leptospiral infection by demonstrating four- fold rise in titre of antibodies using paired sera by Microscopic Agglutination Test. The study population were 1209 patients from Chennai, with fever of one week duration with signs and symptoms of Leptospirosis and were screened for Leptospirosis by Macroscopic Slide Agglutination Test(MSAT). Out of 1209 patients, 237 patients who were positive by screening test MSAT were followed-up to obtain paired serum sample. Second sample was collected from 158 patients. The acute phase serum sample and the paired sera were analysed by serological test MAT. Out of 158 cases followed up, 142(89%) cases showed a four fold rise in titre of antibodies and were confirmed as having current leptospiral infection. If only a single sample was used to diagnose leptospirosis 16 cases would have been false positive for leptospirosis and the true cause of the febrile illness would have been missed. So it is mandatory that we examine two samples one in acute phase and one during convalescent phase thus confirming the current leptospiral infection.
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