author(s)
HY Palampalle, BW Narladkar, JG Gudewar, UK Chaudhari, SB Majee and ML Gatne

abstract
A study was conducted to standardize an immunodiagnostic assay (ELISA) with Cysticercus cellulosae specific purified antigen for ante-mortem detection to study epidemiology of porcine cysticercosis. Cysticercus cellulosae cysts were exploited for preparation of whole cysts antigen (WCA) and scolex antigen (SA). The average protein content of whole cyst and scolex were 8.5 mg/cyst and 5.92 mg/scolex, respectively. SDS - PAGE analysis of WCA and SA revealed 18 and 16 fractions with their molecular weights ranging from 103 to 12 and 98 to 12 kDa, respectively. The comparison of the band patterns revealed that protein fractions of lower molecular weights (29, 26, 24, 18, 14 and 12) were strikingly common in WCA and SA. Chromatographic analysis of crude antigen revealed two identical peaks of WCA and SA. SDS-PAGE of peak I antigen revealed two immunoreactive components, viz. 29-26 kDa and 14 kDa. Hence, Peak I antigen was used for standardization of indirect ELISA for detection of porcine cysticercosis. The assay revealed sensitivity of 98.35%, specificity of 100% and accuracy rate of 98.58%. The predictive values for positive and negative readings were 100 and 91.91%, respectively and percentage of false positive and false negative was found to be zero and 1.65, respectively. Cross reactivity of 4.55% and 15.0% was noticed between the peak I antigen and hydatid and Cysticercus tenuicollis positive test sera, respectively. Thus antibody-ELISA with peak I antigen of WCA is strongly recommended for sero-epidemiological study of porcine cysticercosis.