β-Mercaptoethanol-modified ELISA for diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis Abass, Elfadil M. and Mansour, Durria and el Mutasim, Mohamed and Hussein, Muna and el Harith, Abdallah,, 55, 1193-1196 (2006), doi = https://doi.org/10.1099/jmm.0.46643-0, publicationName = Microbiology Society, issn = 0022-2615, abstract= Following antigen preparation procedures similar to those of the direct agglutination test (DAT), an IgG ELISA employing intact β-mercaptoethanol (β-ME)-treated Leishmania donovani promastigotes was developed. The performance of the β-ME ELISA thus developed was assessed in patients with confirmed visceral leishmaniasis (VL), revealing slightly lower sensitivity (39/40=97.5 %) than that of the DAT (40/40=100 %). When challenged with sera of individuals with non-VL conditions, including leukaemia and African trypanosomiasis, the specificity of the β-ME ELISA was 100 % (158/158), compared to 98.8 % (156/158) for DAT. In an endemic population (n=145) manifesting a clinical suspicion of VL, results obtained with the β-ME ELISA were highly concordant with those of DAT, both in the seropositive (65/68=95.6 %) and seronegative (77/80=96.3 %) groups. Furthermore, the incorporated intact antigen demonstrated higher sensitivity in ELISA (16/18=88.9 %) than the water-soluble equivalent (13/18=72.2 %). The stability of the formaldehyde-fixed antigen (2 months at 4 °C) in β-ME ELISA, as well as the option for direct testing of whole-blood samples and visual reading of results (within 2 h, compared to 18 h for DAT), advocate the simultaneous application of the technique with DAT for confirmation of VL in laboratories with limited facilities., language=, type=