Serological diagnosis of canine leishmaniosis: Comparison of three commercial ELISA tests (Leiscan®,ID Screen® and Leishmania 96®),a rapid test (Speed Leish K®) and an in-house IFAT

Background: speed leish k® is used as a serological screening test for leishmania infection prior to vaccination. limited comparative serological studies with speed leish k® have been performed. the aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of four commercially available serologic tests including elisas (leiscan®,id screen® and leishmania 96®),a rapid test (speed leish k®) and an in-house ifat for the detection of specific antibodies against leishmania infantum antigen in dogs in different states of infection. methods. sick infected dogs (n = 36),healthy infected dogs (n = 18),l. infantum seropositive dogs with low to high levels of antibodies (n = 53),dogs seropositive to other pathogens (to evaluate cross reaction) (n = 14) and uninfected dogs from a non-endemic area (n = 50) and from an endemic area (n = 32) were analysed by the serological methods mentioned above. results: the sensitivity was as follows: id screen® (0.953),leiscan® and leishmania 96® (0.925),ifat (0.869) and speed leish k® (0.636). the maximum specificity (1.000) was attained for all diagnostic tests except the leishmania 96® (0.896) and ifat (0.917). the accuracy was as follows: id screen® (0.975),leiscan® (0.961),leishmania 96® (0.911),ifat (0.892) and speed leish k® (0.808). in relation to the area under the roc curve (auc-roc),the maximum value was attained with the id screen® (0.993) closely followed by leiscan® (0.990),then,leishmania 96® (0.962),ifat (0.926) and speed leish k® (0.818). for the kappa index,the best result was obtained by the id screen® (0.951) followed by leiscan® (0.921),leishmania 96® (0.822),ifat (0.783) and speed leish k® (0.622). statistically significant differences were found between the auc-roc of quantitative serological tests and the only qualitative rapid test evaluated. there were also statistically significant differences between auc-roc of the elisas (id screen® and leiscan®) and ifat. conclusions: leiscan® and id screen® had superior diagnostic performance measures than ifat and all quantitative serological tests were superior when compared to speed leish k®. thus,speed leish k® may be considered a less valuable screening test prior to vaccination as it may result in vaccination of seropositive dogs and in some cases seropositive sick dogs. © 2014 solano-gallego et al.; licensee biomed central ltd.