Use of dot immunobinding assay for the rapid diagnosis of human hydatidosis

A Dot Immunobinding (DIB) assay has been applied to the serodiagnosis of human hydatidosis and its results have been compared with those obtained with the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The two techniques have been shown to be closely related (p greater than 0.001), highly sensitive (92.0% of positive results in 75 sera from patients with hepatic or pulmonary hydatidosis) and specific (93.5% of negative results in 31 sera from patients affected by other parasitic diseases and 100% of negative results in 30 normal controls). DIB however is more economical and takes less time (only 4 hours) than ELISA. DIB could be an useful tool in field epidemiological surveys since it is sensitive, specific, simple to perform and it does not require any expensive apparatus.