Study on Seroprevalence of IgM Antibodies against the Agents of Torch Infections Among the Patients Visiting National Public Health Laboratory

Abstract

A study was conducted among patients suspected of TORCH (Toxoplasma gondii,Rubella virus, Cytomegalovirus and Herpes simplex virus) infections visiting National Public Health Laboratory (NPHL), Kathmandu, Nepal. The study was conducted at the Immunology section of NPHL for five months from May-September 2006. The mainaim of this study was to determine the seroprevalence of TORCH infections among the suspected patients of different age groups and gender and to correlate this data withdifferent disease conditions. Serum samples collected from 276 patients were tested for TORCH infections by IgM Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Only 23.19% (64/276) of the samplesshowed presence of IgM antibodies against TORCH agents. Higher seroprevalence ofTORCH (IgM) was found in females (26.32%) than in males (16.28%). However, the association of TORCH infection with the gender was not found to be statistically significant (P>0.05). Among 219 suspected cases of Toxoplasma, 4.88% (2/41) of male and 15.73% (28/178)of female patients were positive to anti-Toxoplasma IgM. Similarly, 9.37% (3/32) of the male and 3.73% (6/161) of the female patients among 193 suspected cases were positive to anti-Rubella IgM, 14.70% (5/34) of the male and 11.04% (18/163) of the female patients among 197 suspected cases were positive to anti-CMV IgM and 9.46%(7/74) of the male and 11.90% (20/168) of the female patients among 242 suspected cases were positive to anti-HSV IgM. An overall prevalence of 13.70%, 4.66%, 11.67%and 11.16% toT. gondii, Rubella virus, CMV and HSV respectively was found. An overall prevalence of IgM antibodies were found to be 15.43% (25/162), 4%(6/150), 9.33% (14/150) and 11.49% (17/148) to Toxo plasma, Rubella, CMV and HSV respectively among 164 female patients with bad obstetric history (BOH). Associations of Toxo plasma infection with meat eating habit and rearing cats were found to be statistically significant (p<0.05). Key words: TORCH infection, serum, IgM, ELISA, Female with BOH