TO STUDY INCIDENCE OF CHLAMYDIAL GENITAL TRACT INFECTIONS USING ENZYME IMMUNO ASSAY-ANTIGEN DETECTION AND CELL CULTURE METHODS.

Endocervical swabs from 315 patients were screened for chlamydial infection by using Enzyme Immuno Assay technique for antigen detection. Of these, 190 patients were of infertility and 125 patients were with history suggestive of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). 100 age matched controls were also screened for the detection of chlamydial antigen by using EIA. The overall incidence of chlamydial infection in this study group was 15.2%. 21 (11.05%) of the infertility patients and 27 (21.6%) of the pelvic inflammatory disease cases were found to be positive for chlamydial antigen. The prevalence rate was found to be high in the age group of 31-40 years in both study groups i.e. infertility group (14.7%) and PID group (50%). All the ELISA positive cases (48) and randomly selected (10) age matched controls were screened by tissue culture using McCoy cell line. In the tissue culture, 44 of the 48 samples were found to be positive and none of the controls groups were found positive. 4 samples showed discordant results possibly due to the presence of non-viable organism or inhibitory material present at the sample site. The sensitivity and specificity of ELISA with respect to tissue culture are 100% and 71% respectively. The positive predictive value and the negative predictive value of the ELISA are 91.6% and 100% respectively. The efficiency of the test was found to be 93.1%.