Evaluation of an in-house IgM/IgG lateral flow assay for serodiagnosis of human brucellosis.

This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of an in-house lateral flow assay (LFA) for the detection of IgM/IgG anti-Brucella antibodies for rapid serodiagnosis of human brucellosis. Three groups of sera samples including 476 from high-risk individuals, 27 from culture-confirmed patients, and 43 from healthy blood donors were used for evaluation of LFA. In comparison with iELISA, the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of LFA were >95%, >99%, and 99% respectively. Considering the very good agreement, accuracy, simplicity, and rapidity, LFAs might be useful as a point of care test for the diagnosis of human brucellosis in resource-limited laboratories.

Existence of genetic lineages within Asian genotype of Taenia solium-Genetic characterization based on mitochondrial and ribosomal DNA markers.

Taenia solium cysticercosis is a potentially eradicable neglected zoonotic disease with public health importance. The genetic lineages of T. solium in Asia and Africa/America are distinct and the genetic composition of the parasite was found to influence the clinical symptoms in patients with cysticercosis. In the present study, the Cysticerci collected from pigs of two southern states of India (Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh) were genetically characterized based on mitochondrial (COX 1 and Cyt b) and ribosomal (ITS-1 and TBR) DNA markers. The study confirms the existence of two mitochondrial lineages of the parasite as Asian and African/American. Cytochrome oxidase 1 (COX 1) based analysis revealed the existence of two sub-lineages of the parasite within the Asian lineage based on the polymorphism at 994 position as 994A/G. In India, both the sub-lineages were identified and genetic divergence among different Indian isolates was evident. Further, the sequence analysis of Cytochrome B (Cyt b) revealed the existence of six sub-lineages of T. solium in India as 69T/69G, 97A/97G as well as 264T/264C. The analysis of nucleotide sequence of large subunit ribosomal DNA (TBR) revealed the existence of two sub-lineages in India based on the deletion of a nucleotide at 624th position. The cysts collected in the present study were more closely related to those of China and Indonesia than with other Indian isolates. Further, the sequence analysis did not indicate the presence of Taenia asiatica in the examined pigs and African/American lineages of T. solium. The results of the present study help to better understand the genetic diversity of T. solium in India.