Efficiency of the fluorescent antibody and indirect hemagglutination (IHR) tests for the diagnosis of the canine visceral leishmaniasis

Abstract

Dogs are the main reservoir of Leishmania donovani however, better standardization of serological tests for the diagnosis of canine Calaazar still has to be done. Thus, in this paper the fluorescent antibody (FA) and indirect hemagglutination (IHA) tests for this diagnostic purpose were standardized and evaluated in 42 sera from animals with clinical and parasitological diagnosis of Calaazar and 60 sera from healthy dogs. The stipulated cut-offs for FR and IHA tests were, respectively, 20 and 40. The indices of sensibility, specificity, efficiency, positive and negative predictive values for FA tests were as follow: 0.952, 1.000, 0.983, 1.000 and 0.968 and, for the IHA test: 0.857, 1.000, 0.941, 1.000 and 0.909. It was concluded that both FA and IHA tests are efficient for the diagnosis of canine leishmaniasis.