Ae. Islasrodriguez et al., RECOGNITION OF MYCOBACTERIUM-LEPRAE ANTIGENS WITH ANTIBODIES PRESENT IN SERA FROM PATIENTS WITH LEPROMATOUS LEPROSY, International journal of leprosy and other mycobacterial diseases, 61(2), 1993, pp. 245-249
A great diversity of antigens from Mycobacterium leprae have been desc
ribed. One practical approach should be to utilize them as markers to
indicate when a household contact is at risk of becoming infected and
then moving to an active form of leprosy. For this purpose, sonic extr
acts of M. leprae were fractionated in 10% SDS-PAGE under reducing con
ditions. The fractionated proteins were then transferred to nitrocellu
lose sheets and incubated with sera from lepromatous leprosy cases, th
eir contacts, and normal subjects in order to reveal the frequency of
antigen recognition of each set of sera. The results showed that sera
from lepromatous leprosy patients frequently recognized two proteins,
one of approximately 28 kDa and the other of approximately 65 kDa, whe
n compared with the sera from normal subjects. The contacts frequently
recognized an approximately 16-kDa antigenic band, while sera from no
rmal subjects recognized one protein of approximately 18 kDa. Accordin
g to the results, the four recognized proteins from M. leprae can be c
onsidered markers of the above conditions (approximately 65 kDa, appro
ximately 28 kDa for lepromatous leprosy, approximately 16 kDa for cont
acts, and approximately 19 kDa for normal subjects). From these, an ea
sy serological test, such as an ELISA, can be developed to predict if
a contact is moving toward lepromatous leprosy before detection of the
actual clinical signs or symptoms.