Evaluation of Western blot, ELISA and latex agglutination tests to detect Toxoplasma gondii serum antibodies in farmed red deer

Abortion due to Toxoplasma gondii has been suspected in New Zealand farmed red deer. However, knowledge around the epidemiology and prevalence of T. gondii in farmed red deer is limited. The aim of this study was to firstly, assess the sensitivity and specificity of two commercially available assays, ELISA and latex agglutination test (LAT), for use in deer and secondly, to estimate the sero-prevalence of T. gondii in red deer. A total of 252 sera from rising 2-year-old and adult hinds from 17 New Zealand red deer herds at early and late pregnancy scanning and from known aborted and/or non-aborted hinds were tested for the presence of T. gondii antibodies. Each assays' sensitivity and specificity was evaluated by both the Western Blot (WB) as a gold standard method and Bayesian latent class (BLC) analysis in the absence of a gold standard. The sensitivity and specificity for WB were 95.8% (95% credible interval: 89.5-99.2%) and 95.1% (95% credible interval: 90.6-98.1%), respectively. For the LAT at the manufacturer's recommended 1:32 cut-off titre, the sensitivity (88.7%, 95% credible interval: 80.8-94.7%) and specificity (74.3%, 95% credible interval: 67.5-80.5%) were lower and higher than the sensitivity (76.2%, 95% credible interval: 66.7-84.5%) and. specificity (89.7%, 95% credible interval: 84.5-93.9%) at a->= 1:64 cut-off, using (BLC) analysis. Sensitivity and specificity of the LAT at cut-off titre of 1:32 were estimated to be 84.4% (95% CI: 74.9-90.9%) and 73.5% (95% CI: 65.8-79.9%) against WB. The LAT had better agreement with WB at cut-off titre of >= 1:64 than->= 1.:32 (Kappa = 0.63 vs 0.54). At optimised cut-off S/P of 15.5%, the sensitivity (98.8%, 95% credible interval 96.1-99.8%) and specificity (92.8%, 95% credible interval 88.9-95.7%) of the ELISA were higher and lower, respectively, than the sensitivity (85.1%, 95% credible interval 76.2-91.9%) and specificity (98.5%, 95% credible interval 96.9-99.4%) at manufacturer's cut-off S/P of 30%, from BLC analysis. The sensitivity and specificity of ELISA at S/P cut-off of 15.5% was 91.1% (95% CI: 83.2-96.1%) and 90.7% (95% CI: 85.2-94.7%), respectively, when assessed against WB. The sero-prevalence from ELISA and LAT, at cut-off of S/P 15.5% and >= 1:64, respectively, was not significantly different to that from WB (McNemar's Chi-square p = 0.21 for ELISA and p = 0.28 for LAT).