Humoral and cellular immune responses in experimental trichinosis

This work was designed to study the relation between cellular and humoral immune responses in experimentally infected albino rats with T. spiralis larvae over a period of four weeks. Cell-mediated immune response (measured by lymphoblast transformation test) revealed a marked lymphoblast response during the intestinal phase, but the reaction became irregular with larval encystation in muscles. Humoral immune response was estimated by both of micro-and Dot-ELISA techniques. It was obvious that significant higher O.D. readings and dot color intensities were observed in the muscular phase than in intestinal phase. The results proved that micro-ELISA had the least accuracy (66.6%) and poorest specificity (81.25%), while Dot-ELISA showed the best sensitivity (100%) and highest specificity (87.5%). Lymphoblast transformation was as specific as Dot-ELISA.