The quantitation of rabies-specific antibodies. III. A comparative evaluation of modified counter immunoelectrophoresis, haemagglutination inhibition and serum neutralization titres of human sera

Abstract

The rabies-specific antibodies of 73 serum samples from vaccinated humans were determined by the modified counter immunoelectrophoresis (MCIE), and the haemagglutination inhibition test (HAI) by using the conventional serum neutralization test (SN) as a yard-stick. Both MCIE and HAI were found to be sensitive and specific for the estimation of rabies antibodies. In general, the unitages obtained by the MCIE and SN showed statistically insignificant differences (P greater than 0.05) and the correlation coefficient between the two methods was 0.697 (P less than 0.05). Although the unitage of the sera detected by HAI tests was lower by a factor of 0.155 from the unitage of SN tests, there was statistically insignificant differences between the two techniques (P greater than 0.05) with a correlation coefficient of 0.556 (P less than 0.05).