Back to search
Publication

Evaluation of major membrane protein-II as a tool for serodiagnosis of leprosy.

Abstract

As serodiagnosis is the easiest way of diagnosing a disease, the utility of Mycobacterium leprae-derived major membrane protein-II (MMP-II), one of the immuno-dominant antigens, in the serodiagnosis of leprosy was examined. The percent positivity by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for anti-MMP-II antibody was 82.4% for multi-bacillary leprosy, and the specificity of the test was 90.1%. For pauci-bacillary leprosy where cell-mediated immunity predominates, 39.0% showed positive results. These percentage values were significantly higher than these values obtained for existing phenolic glycolipid-I based methods, suggesting that MMP-II antibody detection would facilitate the diagnosis of leprosy.

More information

Type
Journal Article
Author
Maeda Y
Mukai T
Kai M
Fukutomi Y
Nomaguchi H
Abe C
Kobayashi K
Kitada S
Maekura R
Yano I
Ishii N
Mori T
Makino M

More publications on: