What about Leptospirosis?

Leptospirosis is considered the most globally widespread zoonotic illness. It has been classified as an emerging or reemerging infectious disease by the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The conventional test for its diagnosis include direct microscopy, culture and the most widely used reference standard method, the microscopic agglutination test (MAT). However, clinical diagnosis of leptospirosis is difficult because of its protean manifestations. Most cases of leptospirosis are diagnosed by serology. The definitive serological investigation in leptospirosis remains the MAT, although IgM detection has repeatedly been shown to be more sensitive than MAT when specimen is taken early in the acute phase of the illness (towards the end of the first week). Surprisingly, most of the commercially available ELISA kits use non-pathogenic L. blifexa Patoc 1 strain as an antigen, thus, the infective serovar cannot be assessed. For information about our recombinant antigens for Leptospirosis, please click here. Written by Ana Camacho.