Comparison of indirect and modified agglutination tests for detection of antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii in domestic cats

Abstract

Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite with worldwide distribution. The accurate detection of this zoonotic agent in cats and other hosts has public health importance. Blood samples from 89 domestic cats were tested for antibodies to T. gondii using 2 commercial agglutination test kits, an indirect (IHAT; Toxo-HAI FUMOUZE; Fumouze Diagnostics) and a modified (MAT; Toxoscreen DA; bioMérieux) agglutination test. Antibodies were found in 16 of 89 (18%) cats by the IHAT and in 23 of 89 (26%) cats by the MAT, with an overall agreement between the 2 serologic tests of 92% (κ = 0.77; i.e., substantial agreement beyond chance). Considering the MAT as the gold standard, the IHAT showed perfect relative specificity (100%) and lower relative sensitivity (70%). The suboptimal sensitivity of the IHAT limits its use in epidemiologic studies in cats.

Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii antibodies using Sabin- Feldman dye test among equines in Isparta province, Turkey

“…No statistically significant difference was found between T. gondii infections and gender (P=0.240). Similar findings were also reported by other studies [18,40,41] .…”

“…The prevalence of T. gondii infection in horses was reported to range from 0% to 80% in different countries [15,16,17] . The prevalence of seropositive samples for T. gondii in horses found in the present study (27.8%) was higher than that reported from Spain (10.8%) [18] , Mexico (6.1%) [19] , United States of America (6.9%) [20] , South Korea (2.6%) [21] , and Sweden (1%) [22] . However, the prevalence observed in our study was lower than that reported in Saudi Arabia (31.6%) [23] , Southwestern China (30.5%) [24] and Sudan (30.04%) [25] .…”

“…Seropositivity for T. gondii infection in donkeys was reported as 30% in Northwestern Algeria [24] , 58.7% in Pakistan [26] , 47% in Iran [27] , 65.6% in Egypt [28] and 5%-8% in Italy [29] . While the seroprevalence in mules was found to be 23.8% in Brazil [30] and 15% in Spain [18] .…”

Toxoplasma gondii prevalence and risk factors in owned domestic cats from Nakhon Pathom Province, Thailand

“…Modified agglutination test (MAT) and immunofluorescence assay (IFA) were frequently used for serodiagnosis of feline toxoplasmosis (Dubey et al, 2020). Fernandes et al, 2019 has been reported that the commercial LAT has low sensitivity and specificity compared with MAT. However, previous studies have been used LAT as a reference test of T. gondii infection in cats (Abdelbaset et al, 2017;Ybañez et al, 2019;Ybañez et al, 2020).…”

Indirect Hemagglutination Test for Detection of Antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii in Venezuelan felids

“…The test is based on the property of anti-T. gondii immunoglobulins to produce agglutination in the presence of cytoplasmic antigen-sensitized red blood cells and the parasite's membrane. It is considered a reliable method for the determination of speci c immunoglobulins with values of sensitivity 89.80% to 92.85%, speci city 96,60 % to 100% and e ciency 94.80% [1,3,4,5]. Due to the role of the feline in the cycle of the parasite and in consideration to the scarce studies of prevalence in animals in Venezuela, it was proposed to quantify the values of antibodies for Toxoplasma gondii in blood serum of some felids species by means of the technique of Indirect Hemoagglutination.…”