Abstract
The Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis, launched by the World Health Organization in the year 2000, proposes the use of circulating filarial antigen tests as a diagnostic tool to assess and monitor initiatives to control filarial infection. However, despite a high sensitivity, these tests are not efficient to detect infection at early stages, before worms have reached the adult stage. Considering this limitation, anti-filarial antibody testing has been suggested as an alternative, given that the antibodies produced against the larvae are detectable before the presence of circulating filarial antigen. The objective of the present study was to determine the diagnostic cut-off and the accuracy of the Filaria Detect™ IgG4 kit employing recombinant Wb123 antigen for diagnosis of lymphatic filariasis in Brazil. For that, we performed a diagnostic evaluation study in which 256 serum samples were analyzed: 79 (30.9%) obtained from microfilaremic individuals and 177 (60.1%) from amicrofilaremic individuals who tested negative with the Bm14 CELISA and Og4C3 ELISA immunologic tests. The ideal cutoff as well as the Filaria Detect™ IgG4 kit accuracy were determined based on ROC curve analyses, with an optical density of 0.239 identified as the cutoff with the best performance, with 81.0% sensitivity and 96.6% specificity. The results show that the Filaria Detect™ IgG4 kit is a promising tool for investigation and monitoring of areas undergoing mass drug administration for lymphatic filariasis.