Preliminary evaluation of a new Schistosoma Immunochromatographic Test

Abstract

Over 90% of schistosomiasis infections occur in sub-Saharan Africa. A rapid ICT test would be a cheap and easy tool that could be used also in the field. We preliminarily evaluated the performance of a new Schistosoma black-latex based IgG-IgM ICT (Black-ICT) on serum samples. The results indicate a high sensitivity (98.0%) but the specificity depends on the application of a cut-off value that can discriminate between positive and negative samples. Considering a possible direct application of this test on blood from finger prick, the results are promising, providied that a signal intensity scale is developed, guiding the result interpretation.

Keywords: Black-latex; ICT; RTD; Schistosomiasis; serum.