Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
New direct agglutination test kit for diagnosing canine visceral
By Oliveira, Edward et al.·Published in Veterinary parasitology·2016·Clinical Research Laboratory, Brazil·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: A prototype of the direct agglutination test kit (DAT-Canis) for the serological diagnosis of canine visceral leishmaniasis.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A new test kit called DAT-Canis has been developed to help diagnose canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL), a serious disease caused by a parasite. Researchers tested blood samples from dogs with CVL and healthy dogs to see how well the new test worked. The results showed that the test was highly accurate, with a sensitivity of 97.1% and specificity of 97%. This means it was very good at correctly identifying dogs with the disease and those without it. The test is now ready for further use in diagnosing CVL in dogs.
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Abstract
This report describes the stege I/II development of a new direct agglutination test (DAT) for the diagnosis of canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL) using freeze-dried antigen produced Coomassie blue-stained Leishmania (Leishmania) infantum promastigotes. In stage I, 16 canine serum samples, collected from eight dogs carrying CVL and eight healthy dogs, were assessed with the DAT using 2-mercaptoethanol (2-ME), N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC), kaolin or NAC plus urea (NAC+U) to improve the assay conditions. Stage II assessed the diagnostic accuracy with 100 serum samples collected from dogs with symptomatic CVL and clinically healthy dogs, comparing the four different sample diluents. The CVL-DAT prototype kit showed equivalent performances when 2-ME, NAC or NAC+U were used: 97.1% sensitivity (CI: 83-99.8%), 97% specificity (CI: 88.5-99.5%) and a 97% diagnostic accuracy (CI: 90.8-99.2). With kaolin, a 94.1% sensitivity (CI: 79-99%), 97% specificity (CI: 88.5-99.5%) and 96% diagnostic accuracy were observed (CI: 89.5-98.7), with no statistically significant differences among the four reagents (p=1.0). The NAC plus urea in sample diluent decreased non-specific agglutination, promoted a better defined sharp-edged blue spot and was thus chosen as a component for the new DAT prototype to diagnose canine VL, designated DAT-Canis.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27084465/