One of the best-characterized tests for the diagnosis of
neurocysticercosis is the
enzyme-linked immunoelectrotransfer blot assay, developed at the CDC, which uses
lentil lectin-purified
glycoproteins (LLGPs) extracted from Taenia solium cysticerci. The purification of the LLGP
antigens has been difficult to standardize, and the
polyacrylamide gel system used for the immunoblot assay is not easily transferable to other laboratories. In this study, we developed a multiantigen printing immunoassay (MAPIA) to compare the performance of multiple recombinant Taenia solium
proteins with the potential for the detection of
cysticercosis and
taeniasis. We prepared MAPIA strips using six
cysticercosis and two
taeniasis diagnostic
proteins and compared the performance of the
proteins with sera collected from defined
cysticercosis and
taeniasis cases. Of the six
cysticercosis antigens, rT24H performed well in detecting cases with two or more viable
cysts in the brain (sensitivity and specificity, 97% and 99.4%, respectively); the use of a combination of
cysticercosis antigens did not improve the sensitivity of the test and decreased the specificity. None of the
antigens could differentiate the different clinical presentations of
cysticercosis. Both of the
taeniasis antigens (rES33 and rES38) had the same sensitivity of 99.4% and specificities of 93.9% and 94.5%, respectively. Some cross-reactivity against rES33 and rES38 was found, especially with sera from cases infected with Schistosoma mansoni. We conclude that MAPIA is a simple and effective tool that may be used to compare antibody responses to different
cysticercosis and
taeniasis antigens and, in this case, may be useful for the rapid detection of T. solium cases.