Serologic testing is essential for the diagnosis of some infectious diseases and yet is fraught with potential pitfalls. All parts of the diagnostic process must be optimized to ensure that serologic tests perform adequately. Recognizing that a lack of clinical data and correctly timed, paired sera frequently led to uninterpretable serology results at our laboratory, we developed and implemente...

use of serologic tests in crohns disease. clinical perspective in gastroenterology

We assessed the impact of five serologic tests on the link between Chlamydia pneumoniae and abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA). The results of the tests were inconsistent. Agreement among the five tests was generally poor. Detection of the link between C. pneumoniae and AAA depends on the serologic methodology chosen.

The slide agglutination test (SAT), microagglutination test (MAT), and card agglutination test (CAT) were compared with each other, using the tube agglutination test (TAT) as the standard method, by two reference laboratories to determine effectiveness as screening tests for human brucellosis. TAT titers of 1,253 sera tested in both laboratories were compared. In one laboratory, 1,270 sera were...

Rats trapped from 14 locations in Baltimore, Maryland, were shown to have antibody to Hantavirus. Antibody prevalence rates were higher in residential locations than in parks. Infected rats were obtained continuously over a six-year period from 1980-1985 at five locations, indicating the enzootic nature of this infection in urban rats in the United States. Prevalence of antibody and geometric m...

" Serological discord" or " serological dissociation" are expressive terms used by French workers to describe the finding that different serological tests for syphilis give variable results on the same specimen of serum. When a battery consisting of a number of tests is used, an occasional discord among the results is inevitable and may render interpretation of the results difficult. It is most...