Using Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent assay(ELISA), Indirect Immunofluorescence(IF) assay and Western blot analysis, the antiboby response to Borrelia burgdorferi among the febrile patients in 1990, was measured. In ELISA, the positive criteria was
determined from the results of assay of healthy blood donor, and according to this criteria, 9.2% of total patients were positive whereas seropositive rate to L. interrogans by Microscopic Agglutination Test(MAT) was 19.1%. Total 67 sera that
were
positive in ELISA, were tested by IF assay and 79.1% of total sera was aove 1:10 antibody titer. In these 67 sera, the seropositivity for leptospirosis and syphilis, were 20.8% and 13.4%, each. Therefore the Western blot analysis was performed
for
the
confirmative test. The postive criteria of Western blot analyhsis was defied as described by Grodzicki et al.(Rdference 13) and 9 sera showed positive patterns and 4 sera showed equivocal results. In 9 positive sera, there was no positive sample
for
leptospirosis and only two samples showed positivity for syphilis.
These results, together with the recent isolation of B. burgdorferi from mice and ticks, suggest of the possibility of presence of Lyme disease in Korea.
|