Toxoplasma gondii: Recombinant GRA5 antigen for detection of immunoglobulin G antibodies using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

In this study, for the first time, the evaluation of Toxoplasma gondii full-length recombinant GRA5 antigen for the serodiagnosis of human toxoplasmosis is shown. The recombinant GRA5 antigen as a fusion protein containing His-tag at both terminals was obtained using an Escherichia coli expression system. The usefulness of rGRA5 for the diagnosis of toxoplasmosis in an ELISA was tested on a total of 189 sera from patients with different stages of the infection and 31 sera from sero-negative individuals, obtained during routine diagnostic tests. Anti-GRA5 IgG antibodies were detected in 70.9% of all seropositive serum samples. This result was comparable to ELISA using a Toxoplasma lysate antigen (TLA) and six combinations of recombinant antigens. The sensitivity of IgG ELISA calculated from all positive serum samples was similar for TLA (94.2%), rMAG1+rSAG1+rGRA5 (92.6%), rGRA2+rSAG1+rGRA5 (93.1%) and rROP1+rSAG1+rGRA5 (94.2%) cocktails, whereas the sensitivity of cocktails without rGRA5 antigens was lower giving 82.0%, 86.2% and 87.8%, respectively. Thus, the present study showed that the full-length rGRA5 is suitable for use as a component of an antigen cocktail for the detection of anti-T. gondii IgG antibodies. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.