01357nas a2200157 4500000000100000008004100001653001800042653002900060653001200089100001600101700001200117700001300129245009600142520094700238022001401185 2014 d10aSerodiagnosis10aMajor membrane protein-I10aleprosy1 aTsukamoto Y1 aMaeda Y1 aMakino M00aEvaluation of major membrane protein-I as a serodiagnostic tool of pauci-bacillary leprosy.3 a
We have previously shown that the serodiagnosis using major membrane protein-II (MMP-II) is quite efficient in diagnosing leprosy. However, the detection rate of pauci-bacillary (PB) leprosy patients is still low. In this study, we examined the usefulness of major membrane protein-I (MMP-I) from Mycobacterium leprae. The MMP-I-based serodiagnosis did not show significantly high detection rate. However, when the mixture of MMP-I and MMP-II antigens was used, we detected 94.4% of multi-bacillary leprosy and 39.7% of PB patients. There were little correlation between the titers of anti-MMP-I antibodies (Abs) and that of anti-MMP-II Abs in PB patients' sera. Ten out of 46 MMP-II-negative PB leprosy patients were MMP-I positive, so that the detection rate of PB leprosy patient increased from 39.7% to 53.8% by taking either test positive strategy. We concluded that MMP-I can complement the MMP-II-based serodiagnosis of leprosy.
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