Comparison of the New Multiepitope Recombinant Peptide Antigen with Cyst Fluid Antigen in the Follow-up of Patients with Cystic Echinococcosis

The follow-up of patients with cystic echinococcosis (CE) offers the opportunity of evaluating the prognosis of the infection as well as detecting relapse. This study aimed to evaluate the performance of the new multiepitope recombinant peptide (recDipol) antigen in the follow-up of CE patients treated by surgery or percutaneous aspiration injection respiration. A total of 137 blood samples from 28 patients were evaluated by IgG-ELISA method using recDipol and hydatid fluid (HF) antigens. The patients were simultaneously checked for recurrence by ultrasonography. The seropositivity rate of the 28 patients varied considerably during the follow-up. When the first blood of the patients was evaluated, 4 (14.28%) were seronegative by HF-ELISA and 9 (32.14%) were recDipol-ELISA. During the entire follow-up, only 1 (3.5%) and 6 (21.4%) patients were seronegative by HF-ELISA and recDipol ELISA, respectively. We found that recDipol did not perform as expected in the follow-up due to the higher number of seronegative patients compared to HF-ELISA in the first blood and during the entire follow-up. Our results suggest that imaging methods are gold standards in the diagnosis and that, in parallel, longer-term patient follow-up is required with recombinant antigens that have an improved diagnostic performance.