EVALUATION OF 3 COMMERCIAL ENZYME-LINKED IMMUNOSORBENT ASSAYS FOR DIAGNOSIS OF CHAGAS-DISEASE

Chagas' disease is a common cause of morbidity in Latin American count ries. In Brazil, naturally occurring transmission of its etiologic age nt, Trypanosoma cruzi, has been almost completely abolished through ef fective control programs aimed at the triatomid insect vector. Thus, t ransfusion of blood from infected donors has become the major route fo r contracting Chagas' disease due to the socioeconomically motivated m igration of residents from areas where the disease is endemic to the l arger urban centers. Therefore, the employment of screening tests is m andatory for all blood banks throughout the country. We compared the d iagnostic performances of three commercially available screening assay s used in routine testing in Brazilian blood banks: the Abbott Chagas antibody enzyme immunoassay (Abbott Laboratorios do Brasil, Sao Paulo) , the BIOELISA-CRUZI kit (Biolab-Merieux, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), and the BIOZIMA Chagas kit (Polychaco S.A.I.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina). The evaluation was performed with sera obtained from chagasic patient s and healthy residents of four different areas in Brazil where Chagas ' disease is either endemic or emergent and where clinical manifestati ons of the disease and circulating parasite strains vary. The results obtained with each kit were compared to matched in-house enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and immunofluorescence assay data obtained for ea ch sample. Depending on the area under investigation, the three commer cial kits produced specificity values between 93.3 and 100.0%, sensiti vity values between 97.7 and 100%, and accuracies ranging from 93.6 to 100.0%.