Abstract

The public health burden of typhoid fever can be substantially reduced by early diagnosis and appropriate antibiotic therapy. This study was conducted in an attempt to assess the reliability of immunochromatographic test (ICT) for the early diagnosis of typhoid fever. Immunochromatographic test to detect IgM, IgG or combined IgM/IgG in serum in 1st week of fever was done for the diagnosis of typhoid fever. Blood samples were taken for culture and Widal test of 100 clinically suspected cases of typhoid fever in 1st week of illness of patients at Outpatient Department of Rajshahi Medical College Hospital (RMCH), Bangladesh. Forty (40) controls of comparable age and sex were also taken including 20 febrile (non-typhoidal) and 20 healthy persons. Blood culture positive cases (16) and Widal test positive cases (15) were considered as typhoid fever patients and the total number was 31. ICT was performed for 31 typhoid fever patients and 40 controls. In this study, out of 31 cases, ICT was found positive in 28 (90.32%) typhoid fever patient, while 03 (15.00%) of the controls also showed ICT positivity indicating its specificity of 92.50%. It is evident from this study that ICT as a reliable diagnostic tool for early diagnosis of typhoid fever was found highly sensitive, rapid and easy to perform. It can be a versatile test for the screening of clinically suspected case of typhoid fever. therefore, ICT have been found to be encouraging in this study.

Key words: Anti-salmonella antibodies, immunochromatographic assay, diagnostic tool, early diagnosis of typhoid fever.