Application of ELISA and TRUST in syphilis testing

Objective To compare the value of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA) and toluidine red unheated serum test(TRUST) in the detection of syphilis. Methods A total of 120 serum samples were randomly selected from patients who had undergone syphilis serological tests from January to December 2017 in Nanjing First Hospital.At the same time, each serum sample was divided into three groups.The ELISA test, the TRUST test, and the TPPA were used.Among these testes, TPPA was used as a confirmatory test, the results of syphilis detection, false positive rate, false negative rate, specificity and sensitivity were compared between ELISA method and TRUST methods. Results The true positive rate[53.84%(28/52)]and true negative rate[90.00%(63/70)] were significantly lower in the results obtained by TRUST than that of TPPA[100%(68/68)](P 0.05). The true positive rate of ELISA was significantly better than that of TRUST(P=0.000). The true negative rate of ELISA was not significantly different from that of TRUST(P>0.05). There was no significant difference in the false positive rate of ELISA compared with TRUST(P=0.244). The false negative rate of ELISA [5.77%(3/52)] was lower than that of TRUST.The difference was significant[42.31%(24/57)](P=0.000). There was no significant difference between the TRUST and the ELISA(P=0.069), while the sensitivity of TRUST[56.00%(28/50)] was significantly lower than that of the ELISA[94.23%(49/52)]. (P=0.000). Conclusion ELISA is better than TRUST in terms of detection rate, specificity and sensitivity, and has a high rate of compliance with the gold standard (TPPA) and it is simple to operate, can be used to standardize the results obtained, with reasonable price is reasonable.Thus, it is worth while for the large-scale application of ELISA for Syphilis Testing. Key words: Syphilistest; Toluidine red unheated serum-test; Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay