Abstract
Leptospirosis is one of the worldwide zoonoses. Rodent is the most important reservoir of leptospirosis, and their serovars are related to the ones of human patients. Hence the first part of this study is to investigate the leptospiral sero-prevalence in wild rodents captured during June 2005 and May 2006. Three hundred and twenty-nine rodents were captured from harbors, traditional markets, university campus and the fields in Taiwan. The total prevalence detected by MAT (microscopic agglutination test) was 12.93 % ( 41/317，95 % CI = 11.05 % - 14.82 % ). The Fu-ao habor in Matsu had the highest seropositive rate ( 22.22 % ). The rodent species which found with the highest seropositive rate was Rattus flavipetcus ( 18.18 % ). The main serogroup discovered was Pomona ( 64.29 %，36/56 ), and the second one was Shermani ( 12.50 %，7/56). The highest geometric mean titres were 1: 229.7 of Autumnalis and 1: 181.6 of Pomona. Besides, to avoid the infectious risks of MAT caused by the operation of live pathogens, and to minimize the operation time, labor and material cost, this study evaluated the recombinant LipL32 protein-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay ( rLipL32-ELISA ), and heat stable antigen- sensitized ( from non-pathogenic strain, Leptospira biflexa ) latex agglutination test ( LAT ), for the development of simpler and safer serological screening methods with MAT as the gold standard. The sensitivity, specificity and agreement of rLipL32-ELISA were 95.00 %, 91.34 % and 91.80 %, and 33.33 %, 87.80 % and 82.65 % of LAT, respectively. The kappa value compared with MAT were 0.699 ( 95 % CI = 0.59-0.81 ) of rLip32-ELISA and 0.174 ( 95% CI = -0.27-0.62 ) of LAT. This study revealed a higher seroprevalence of leptospirosis in rodents, especially in habor areas. This should be noticed for the workers in such environments. In the meanwhile, the most prevalent serogroup investigated by this study was Pomona, which is different from the previous surveys during the last decade that mainly serogroup was Shermani. In addition, the rLipL32-ELISA has the potential to be a screening tool for leptospirosis, because of its high sensitivity, specificity, and agreement ( up to 91.80 % ).
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