Avaliação de anticorpos monoclonais reativos aos antígenos P30, P22 e P97 de Toxoplasma gondii, em ensaio imunoenzimático reverso, utilizados na detecção de anticorpos IgG, IgM e IgA para o sorodiagnóstico da Toxoplasmose Humana

Abstract

The diagnosis of toxoplasmosis can be achieved by detecting specific antibodies in patient serum samples using serological methods, mainly the enzymatic ones. But these tests give a lot of false-positive and false-negative results, mostly for IgM and IgA antibodies, making the diagnosis of primary and congenital infections a challenging situation. This way, the present study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) A3A4 (anti-p30), A4D12 (anti-p22) e 1B8 (anti-p97) in a reverse ELISA (ELISA-mAb) to detect IgG, IgM and IgA antibodies anti-T. gondii in human serum samples. It was analysed 175 serum samples from patients at different stages of infection: recent (n=45), transitional phase (n=40) and chronic (n=55), and negative subjects (n=35) defined by conventional T. gondii serology. The achieved results were compared with those obtained by indirect ELISA using soluble T. gondii antigen (ELISA-STAg). The mAb A3A4 recognizes a conformational epitope in the p30 surface antigen of T. gondii tachyzoites, while A4D12 and 1B8 recognize linear epitopes in the p22 surface and p97 cytoplasmatic antigens, respectively. In an inhibition ELISA test, in which human sera with specific T. gondii IgG antibodies were used to compete with the mAbs for binding to their specific antigens, it was demonstrated that the mAb A3A4 rather than A4D12 and 1B8 showed a better competition capability. The results achieved by reverse ELISA-IgG using the mAbs A3A4 or A4D12 to detect IgG antibodies anti-p30 and anti-p22, respectively, were highly correlated with those obtained by ELISA- STAg, whereas the ELISA-mAb using A4D12 (anti-p22) for the detection of IgM and IgA isotypes showed the highest correlation with ELISA-STAg for both isotypes. ELISA-mAb using 1B8 did not showed significant associations with ELISA-STAg for all the immunoglobulin isotypes researched. In conclusion, this is the first report analyzing the performance of a reverse ELISA for the detection of IgG, IgM and IgA isotypes towards native p22, p30 and p97 molecules from STAg, using a panel of human sera from patients with recent and chronic toxoplasmosis. Thus, reverse ELISA based on capture of native p22 and p30 antigens of STAg by mAbs constitutes an alternative approach that may be considered as an additional tool for the serological diagnosis of toxoplasmosis, particularly in cases of primary and congenital infections.