Synthesis of carboxylated latexes and sensitization with a recombinant protein to detect toxoplasmosis

PERETTI, LEANDRO E; GONZALEZ, VERÓNICA DG.; COSTA, JUAN G; MARCIPAR, IVÁN S.; GUGLIOTTA, LUIS M.

Bahía Blanca

Simposio; IX Simposio Argentino de Polímeros; 2011

Toxoplasmosis is a disease caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which seriously affects immunocompromised patients and pregnant women. This disease can be diagnosed by the detection of specific antibodies in patient serum. Latex agglutination is a fast and cheap detection method, that results useful for screening purposes. The presence of anti-T. gondii antibodies in serum samples can be detected by either the visual method or instrumental-based techniques, like turbidimetry, nephelometry, particle recount, and light scattering. The visual method (Chen et al., 2007) is simple and can be applied without special equipment. Sensitivity and accuracy of the immunoassay depends on the method used to detect the agglutination (Molina-Bolívar and Galisteo-González, 2005). In this work, the synthesis of carboxylated latex particles and a T. gondii recombinant protein is first described. Then, the protein was used for latex sensitization and the produced latex-protein complex was applied in an immunoagglutination test, with turbidimetry detection.