False hepatitis-B antigenaemia

ABSTRACT

Prevalence of Hepatitis B is very significant in Balochistan. A large number of false positive reports are given by laboratories most of which use the Latex technique. A comparative study was done to evaluate the results of latex and ELISA for hepatitis B surface antigen [HBsAg] in the sera of patients suffering from liver disease. The patients presenting with hepatobiliary disease were selected. The sera were screened for HBsAg by latex technique using the commercially available kits. Positive sera were repeated for HBsAg on Lab system ELISA technique. The non-reactive samples were re-checked by the Sanofi ELISA kit and negativity in both the ELISA kits were taken as 'false positive' on latex. Out of 1160 sero-positive by latex, 980 were confirmed to be positive and 180 negative by ELISA. 15.5% falsepositive results were obtained with latex. These results substantiate this variation of the ELISA assay as a reliable alternative for routine confirmation of I-iBsAg tests