IMMUNOFLUORESCENCE AS AN AID IN THE EARLY DIAGNOSIS OF TRICHINOSIS.

The established serological tests for trichinosis are often negative during the period when laboratory investigation is most likely to be useful.Another serological test, the immunofluorescence test, appears to be more promising in this respect. The results were based on studies involving experimental animals and human patients. In two rabbits orally infected with Trichinella spiralis larvae, antibodies were demonstrable by immunofluorescence on the fourth day after infection, by complement fixation on the eighth and tenth days, and by the precipitin test on the thirteenth and twenty-eighth days, respectively. In three human cases the immunofluorescence antibody test was positive two weeks (the earliest blood samples available) after onset, while precipitin and complement fixation tests did not become positive until the end of the fourth week. The immunofluorescence test thus becomes positive at least two weeks earlier than the other two, a factor which undoubtedly increases its value in diagnosis.