Abstract
V. K. Nguyen, B. Rihn, C. Heckel, F. Bisseret, R. Girardot and H. Monteil
Laboratoire de Toxinologie Bacterienne, Faculte de Medecine, Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France.
Antisera against Clostridium difficile toxin B were prepared in sheep and rabbit and were used in indirect and sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) for the detection of toxin B. Polyvinyl chloride and polystyrene microtitration plates were tested as solid phases for the assay. Both assays had a lower limit of detection for toxin B of 1 ng/ml. They were used to detect the presence of toxin B in 210 human faecal specimens and also in the culture supernatant fluids of C. difficile strains isolated from the faecal samples. There was a close correlation between the results of sandwich ELISA and those of cytotoxicity tests and isolation of C. difficile. Our sandwich ELISA method seems to be useful as a presumptive test for detection of C. difficile toxin B.