A comparison of live and formalised leptospiral microscopic agglutination test.

The sensitivity and reliability of a formalised leptospiral antigen battery was compared with a smaller battery of live leptospiral antigens with 152 human sera positive for leptospirosis. There was good concurrence of results between the formalised and live antigens, however the live battery did fail to detect some positive sera where the antibody level was low. The formalised antigens were more sensitive than the live (P less than 0.001) and more reliable in the detection of early leptospiral infection, but the live antigens were more specific in the determination of probable infecting serogroup.