Assessing serology tests for leprosy complementary diagnosis

Abstract

This is a prospective, cross-sectional study, with emphasis in diagnostic tests to assess the agreement of serological tests (ML Flow) in relation to skin smears, histopathological examination, operational classification of cases according to World Health Organization (WHO) criteria, and the classification issued by dermatologists. This study consisted of 43 new cases of leprosy in the Cities of Belém and Marituba, Pará State, Brazil. The results showed that, based on Kappa coefficient, ML Flow had higher correspondence with WHO classification; the best level of agreement corresponded to the set of three diagnoses, because it presented higher reproducibility and lower disagreement frequency; the classification based on ML Flow test showed 72.09% agreement with both WHO operational classification and skin smears, 68.05% with histopathological examination and 62.79% with operational classification issued by dermatologists. When ML Flow test was associated with two other tests or classification forms, there was greater agreement in the association with WHO and histopathological examination (60.46%). These results showed that the adoption of ML Flow test as a complementary method in leprosy would be a useful tool in classification of cases, diagnosis and leprosy treatment.