Abstract
The systemic fungal organism, Blastomyces dermatitidis causes blastomycosis in animals and hu-mans. This study was designed to evaluate antibody detection in 55 serial serum specimens from 9 dogs with blastomycosis using B. dermatitidis yeast lysate antigens produced from two human isolates (B5896; B5931) and two dog isolates (ERC-2; T-58) with the indirect enzyme linked im-munosorbent assay (ELISA; peroxidase system) to determine an optimal lysate antigen(s) for use in the ELISA to detect antibody in the dog serum specimens. The mean absorbance values when the lysate antigens were compared with respect to their ability to detect antibody in the day 0 sera from the 9 dogs were 1.024 (ERC-2), 1.351 (B5896), 1.700 (B5931) and 2.084 (T-58) respectively. All of the reagents exhibited a high level of sensitivity and in all instances the amount of antibody declined as the time interval post-treatment increased, but the T-58 lysate prepared from the dog isolate from Tennessee was the optimal reagent. We continue to evaluate antigens for B. derma-titidis antibody detection in different immunodiagnostic assays.
Highlights
Blastomycosis, a systemic dimorphic fungal disease caused by Blastomyces dermatitidis, is a disease of animals and humans found mainly in North America
Yeast phase lysate antigens were prepared from B. dermatitidis dog isolates (ERC-2; Wisconsin and T-58; Tennessee) and human isolates (B5896 and B5931; Minnesota)
The lysate reagents were prepared by a method similar to one that was previously used for the production of antigen from H. capsulatum [20] [22] and modified in our laboratory for B. dermatitidis lysate antigen production [13]
Summary
Blastomycosis, a systemic dimorphic fungal disease caused by Blastomyces dermatitidis, is a disease of animals and humans found mainly in North America. It is a soil saprophyte associated with sandy slightly acidic soils. B. dermatitidis is thermally dimorphic and hosts are infected by inhaling mycelial spores into the lung, where they convert to yeast cells and produce a primary pulmonary infection. Current laboratory diagnostic methods include direct visualization, histologic, culturing the organism or immunodiagnostic methods. In certain instances these techniques may provide an unreliable diagnosis or possibly a misdiagnosis, as above [6]-[9]
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