Performance Comparison of Four Hepatitis E Antibodies Detection Methods

HEV antibody detection constitutes the main screening test for HEV infection. The aim of this study is to compare the sensitivity and specificity of four techniques: LIAISON^® MUREX DiaSorin anti-HEV IgG and anti-HEV IgM assays, Hepatitis E VIRCLIA^® IgM and IgG monotests, WANTAI HEV-IgM and IgG ELISA and VIDAS^® anti-HEV IgM and IgG tests in five panels of samples configurated according to the immunoblot (RecomLine, Mikrogen, Neuss, Germany). Anti-HEV IgM sensitivity in the acute phase was 100% in all techniques, while sensitivity, including the immediate convalescence phase, was 96.74% for LIAISON^®, 83.14% for VIRCLIA^®, 84.78% for WANTAI and 88.04% for VIDAS^®. Anti-HEV IgM specificity was 100% for both LIAISON^® and VIRCLIA^®. Anti-HEV IgM WANTAI agreed with VIRCLIA^® with a good Kappa coefficient (κ = 0.71). Anti-HEV IgG post-infection sensitivity was 100% for LIAISON^®, VIDAS^® and VIRCLIA^® and 99% for WANTAI. Anti-HEV IgG specificity reached 97.17% for LIAISON and 88.68% for VIRCLIA^®. Our results demonstrated a better capacity of LIAISON^® MUREX anti-HEV IgM than that of competitors for detecting acute infections as well as accurate anti-HEV IgG results and in how to resolve them.