Evaluation of five commercial tests: complement fixation, microparticle agglutination, indirect immunofluorescence, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and latex agglutination, in comparison to immunoblotting for Mycoplasma pneumoniae serology.

A panel of 68 serum specimens from 41 subjects exhibiting various immunological patterns to Mycoplasma pneumoniae as determined by detection of a 180 kDa protein in immunoblotting was used to compare five commercially available tests based on different methods: complement fixation test (CFT), microparticle agglutination (MAG), indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (Elisa), and latex agglutination (LA). The tests were performed according to the manufacturers' instructions. For the determination of immunity to M pneumoniae, the five tests were in good accordance with immunoblotting: sensitivity was 100% for all the five assays, specificity ranged from 95.6% (MAG) to 82.6% (Elisa) and overall agreement ranged from 98.2% (MAG) to 92.8% (Elisa). The comparisons of antibody rates obtained by the four quantitative tests (CFT, MAG, IFA, Elisa) showed correlation coefficients ranging from 0.87 (CFT-IFA) to 0.67 (CFT-Elisa). Six significant antibody rises demonstrated by immunoblotting patterns were detected by all the tests but Elisa in one case. As a whole, the commercial assays gave satisfactory results for routine determination of immune status to M pneumoniae: CFT was the cheapest test and MAG and LA were the easiest to perform.