56 J of Gastro Infs. Vol 2, No.1, May-June 2012 Corresponding Author : Dr Rama Gupta Associate Professor Department of Microbiology, Dayanand Medical College & Hospital, Ludhiana, India Email: ramagupta1404@yahoo.com Brief communication Seroprevalence of Leptospirosis in a Tertiary Care Hospital - A Retrospective Study Rama Gupta, Deepinder Chhina, Pooja Suri Department of Microbiology, Dayanand Medical College & Hospital, Ludhiana, India ABSTRACT Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease with worldwide distribution. There is paucity of data about prevalence of this disease in North India. Thus, this study was undertaken to estimate the seroprevalence of leptospirosis in our region. A total of 3179 blood samples from patients suspected of leptospirosis were subjected to IgM ELISA (PanBio). The seroprevalence of leptospirosis in our area was found to be 20.7%. Keywords: IgM ELISA, Leptospirosis, Seroprevalence INTRODUCTION Leptospirosis is an anthropozoonotic infection of universal distribution caused by the pathogenic Leptospira spp. 1 It is an acute febrile illness with a wide spectrum of clinical symptoms ranging from mild flu like illness to a variety of clinical syndromes including hepato-renal involvement with jaundice, severe pulmonary hemorrhage, myocarditis and meningitis. 2 Leptospirosis is frequently under-diagnosed, due to non-specific symptoms early in the course of the disease and the difficulty of performing both, the culture and microscopic agglutination test (MAT), the reference serological test, which require experienced personnel. 3 Detection of IgM antibodies by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is now widely used for the diagnosis of leptospirosis, which is simple, easy to perform and can be used in routine. In a countrywide study conducted by the National Reference Centre, Regional Medical Research Centre (ICMR), Port Blair, during the period 2000–2001, a seropositivity rate ranging from 0 to 46.8 % among all cases of fever was observed from various parts of India. 4 There is paucity of data about prevalence of this disease in North India. The present study was conducted with the objective of estimating the seroprevalence of leptospirosis in our area. MATERIALS AND METHODS Blood Samples Blood samples from 3179 patients with suspicion of leptospirosis from various wards and ICU’s of DMC&H, Ludhiana during April 2010 - March 2012 were received in the Department of Microbiology. Serum from all the samples was separated and stored at 4 0 C till further processing. IgM ELISA Test All the serum samples were processed using Leptospira IgM ELISA (PanBio, Australia) as per the manufacturer’s instructions. The absorbance of positive control, negative control and cut-off calibrator provided in the kit was used for the calculation of PanBio units. Samples were recorded as positive if the number of PanBio units were more than 11. RESULTS This retrospective study was conducted on 3179 human subjects suspected of leptospirosis. Serum samples with a value greater than 11 PanBio units were taken as positive. Out of the 3179 samples, 657 (20.7%) were positive for anti leptospiral antibodies by IgM ELISA. These 657 positive cases included 551 males and 106 females indicating a male preponderance. Figure I depict year-wise distribution of leptospira cases. Maximum number of cases were observed in the age group of >50years (31.5%) followed by 41-50 yr (29.1%); 31-40 yr (22.5%). Approximately 65% of the cases were between 21 and 50 years of age (Table I). PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com