ArticleVeterinary medicine and science2026
Assessment of the Performance of Indirect Immunofluorescence Assay for Chagas Disease in Dogs Using a Reference Panel of Four Chimeric Proteins.
Article in Veterinary medicine and science, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Assessment of the Performance of Indirect Immunofluorescence Assay for Chagas Disease in Dogs Using a Reference Panel of Four Chimeric Proteins.Veterinary medicine and science · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundChagas disease (CD) is caused by Trypanosoma cruzi Chagas (genus Trypanosoma, family Trypanosomatidae, order Kinetoplastida), that is widespread in Latin America. The main hosts are humans and other domestic mammals, including dogs and cats. Studies have identified the domestic dog as a sentinel animal in the epidemiology of the disease in endemic regions to predict the risk of infection in humans. The indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) test, which is very sensitive but has low specificity, has been mainly used.
objectivesThe aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of the IIF test compared to a reference array of chimeric antigens as a gold standard for the diagnosis of chronic canine CD.
methodsThe study included 330 serum samples from dogs living in a non-endemic Amazonian area in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. These were subjected to anti-T. cruzi antibody detection, using IIF and the latent class analysis (LCA) as reference tests, since there was no gold standard.
resultsLCA classified 284 samples as T. cruzi-negative, while 46 samples were predicted to be positive for T. cruzi antibodies. Compared with LCA, IIF showed a sensitivity and specificity of 43.5% and 70.1%, respectively, and an overall accuracy of 66.4%, and a positive and negative likelihood ratio of 1.45 and 0.81, respectively. The analysis also showed an estimated diagnostic odds ratio value of 1.79 and a Cohen's κ coefficient of 0.08 between the results of IIF and LCA.
conclusionsThe poor performance of IIF, particularly in terms of sensitivity, makes it unsuitable for use in both serologic screening and laboratory diagnosis of CD in dogs.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.