Advancing serologic diagnosis: assessing the efficacy of rErpY-like protein in human leptospirosis detection

Abstract

Leptospirosis is a globally distributed infectious disease caused by pathogenic spirochetes of the Leptospira genus, often overlooked. It is estimated that the disease affects approximately one million people annually, resulting in more than 58,900 deaths. The gold standard for serodiagnosis of leptospirosis is the Microscopic Agglutination Test (MAT). However, the limitations of this technique necessitate the exploration of alternative diagnostic methods. In this study, we evaluated the ErpY-like recombinant protein (rErpY-like) in the development of a serologic diagnostic assay for human leptospirosis. Eighty-six human sera samples, characterized by MAT, underwent evaluation through indirect IgM-ELISA and IgG-ELISA. The sensitivity and specificity values obtained from IgM-ELISA were 60% and 76%, respectively, while those from IgG-ELISA were 96.4% and 100%, respectively. The use of the rErpY-like protein in both IgM-ELISA and IgG-ELISA proves to be a sensitive and specific method for antibody detection. This could potentially serve as a valuable alternative tool in the diagnosis of human leptospirosis.

Keywords: Diagnosis; Human leptospirosis; Indirect ELISA; rErpY-like.

Fig. 1

Western Blotting (WB) of rErpY-like protein. (A) Characterization of purified rErpY-like protein with Mab anti–6×His. M, protein molecular mass markers Precision Plus Protein™ Standards– All Blue (Bio-Rad) (kDa); lane 1, purified rErpY-like protein. (B) Antigenicity of rErpY-like using a pool of human sera positive for leptospirosis. M, protein molecular mass markers Precision Plus Protein™ Standards– All Blue (Bio-Rad) (kDa); lane 2, purified rErpY-like protein