Evaluation of recombinant antigens of Trypanosoma cruzi to diagnose infection in naturally infected dogs from Chaco region, Argentina

Abstract

Dogs are considered the main mammal reservoir of Trypanosoma cruzi in domiciliary environments. Consequently, accurate detection of T. cruzi infection in canine populations is epidemiologically relevant. Here we analyzed the utility of the T. cruzi recombinant antigens FRA, SAPA, CP1, Ag1 and a SAPA/TSSA VI mixture, in an ELISA format. We used a positive control group of sera obtained from 38 dogs from the Chaco region in Argentina with positive Homogenate-ELISA reaction, all of them also positive by xenodiagnosis and/or PCR. The negative group included 19 dogs from a non-endemic area. Sensitivity, specificity, Area Under the Curve (AUC) of the Receiver-Operating Charactheristic (ROC) curve and Kappa index were obtained in order to compare the diagnostic efficiency of the tests. The SAPA/TSSA VI had the highest performance, with a sensitivity of 94.7% and an AUC ROC of 0.99 that indicates high accuracy. Among individual antigens, SAPA-ELISA yielded the highest sensitivity (86.8%) and AUC ROC (0.96), whereas FRA-ELISA was the least efficient test (sensitivity=36.8%; AUC ROC=0.53). Our results showed that the use of SAPA/TSSA VI in ELISA assays could be a useful tool to study dogs naturally infected with T. cruzi in endemic areas.