Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (2007) 101, 948—950 available at www.sciencedirect.com journal homepage: www.elsevierhealth.com/journals/trst SHORT COMMUNICATION Specific cross-reactivity in sera from cystic echinococcosis patients in an enzyme-linked immunoelectrotransfer blot for cysticercosis diagnostics H. Rogier van Doorn a,* , Ellen Wentink-Bonnema a , Rob J. Rentenaar a , Tom van Gool a,b a Section of Parasitology, Department of Medical Microbiology, Academic Medical Center, Room L1-245, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 22660, 1100DD Amsterdam, The Netherlands b The Harbor Hospital and Institute of Tropical Diseases, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Received 12 January 2007; received in revised form 18 April 2007; accepted 18 April 2007 Available online 26 June 2007 KEYWORDS Echinococcosis; Cysticercosis; Serology; Immunoblot; Diagnosis; Diagnostic kits Summary A commercially available enzyme-linked immunoelectrotransfer blot originally intended for diagnosis of cysticercosis was evaluated for echinococcosis diagnosis, because a characteristic band pattern — different from the specific cysticercosis pattern — was observed in sera from patients with echinococcosis. This band pattern was observed in 29 (78%) of 37 parasitologically proven cystic echinococcosis patients. Specificity of these bands was 100% for echinococcosis, when tested with 75 control sera. © 2007 Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The QualiCode TM Cysticercosis Kit is a commercially avail- able enzyme-linked immunoelectrotransfer blot (EITB) for diagnostics of patients with Taenia solium infec- tion. Apart from infrequent false positivity of a single * Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 20 5666461; fax: +31 20 6979271. E-mail address: h.r.vandoorn@amc.nl (H.R. van Doorn). 50 kD band (Furrows et al., 2006), the test has a high sensitivity and specificity, and no specific cross- reactivity with other parasitic diseases, including cystic echinococcosis (CE), is reported (Tsang et al., 1989). It is widely used worldwide and considered to be a reference test. We observed a characteristic band profile among sera from patients with CE. The aim of this study was to further evaluate these findings with a large number of sera from patients with CE and control sera from patients suffering from other parasitic and other infectious and non-infectious diseases. 0035-9203/$ — see front matter © 2007 Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.trstmh.2007.04.021