Immunologic techniques in the clinical microbiology laboratory

Immunology has a crucial role in microbiology. This is evident in that anti body is a key component of the rest methods used to diagnose infectious dis ease. Antibody is used to detect pathogens with techniques sl,lch as latex agglutination, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and immunofluorescent ant ibody test. In addition, antibody may be quantitated and identified to dete rmine approximate time of exposure to a particular pathogen. Art understand ing of the basic assays used in microbiology, as well as their strengths an d weaknesses, is important for the microbiologist or immunologist.