Application of Dot Immunobinding Assay (DIBA) and Reversed Passive Hemagglutination Assay (RPHA) in Detection of Shigella flexneri from Fecal Samples

Abstract

Bacterial dysentery is a harmful, infectious, intestinal disease, the incidence of which is rather high in developing countries, and in China. It has been reported that bacterial dysentery represents 95% of all cases of infectious intestinal diseases in China. The primary laboratory method for diagnosing bacterial dysentery is routine culture which has only a 50% positive rate. Moreover, the positive rate could not be increased by enrichment culture of samples because of the lack of selective medium. Though the application of immunofluorescence assay in rapid diagnosis of dysentery caused by Shigella sonnei is satisfactory [1], no rapid and easy method for the direct detection of Shigella flexneri from human feces has been reported as yet. In this study two rapid and simple immunoassays have been established by utilizing specific McAb, thus replacing polyclonal antibodies as a diagnostic reagent to enhance the diagnosis of S. flexneri 2 dysentery and to show the possibility of using them in regional and rural laboratories.