Outer membrane Protein based Latex Agglutination Test for diagnosis of canine leptospirosis in Kerala, India

Leptospirosis is an emerging zoonotic disease transmitted to human beings from a variety of animals including dogs. Kerala, a southern state of India is endemic for the disease. However, canine leptospirosis often goes undiagnosed due to lack of awareness of the disease, non specific clinical signs and also paucity of well equipped laboratories. In these circumstances, the development of a rapid diagnostic tool for this disease is inevitable. The study deals with the screening of canine leptospirosis using Latex Agglutination Test (LAT). Two hundred and eighty six canine serum samples were collected from suspected cases of acute leptospirosis. The LAT was carried out using the outer membrane proteins (OMP) extracted from Leptospira interrogans serovar Australis as antigen. The test results were compared with that of the gold standard test, Microscopic Agglutination Test (MAT). The LAT was found to be 96.48 % sensitive and 91.53 % specific compared to MAT in diagnosing leptospirosis. The advantages of LAT over MAT are that it is simple and rapid and can be employed as a field level diagnostic tool with much lesser technical expertise.