Vaginal infections caused by bacteria, Candida and Trichomonas vaginalis, affect millions of women annually worldwide. Symptoms and signs have limited value in differential diagnosis of three causes of vaginitis. Current laboratory methods for differential diagnosis are either expensive or time consuming. Therefore, in this work, development of a method based on gold nanoparticles has been investigated for rapid diagnosis of vaginal infections. Specific antibodies against three main causes of vaginal infections were raised in rabbits. The antibodies were then purified and conjugated to gold nanoparticles and used in an agglutination test for detection of vaginal infections. Finally, sensitivity and specificity of this test for diagnosis of vaginal infections were estimated using culture method as gold standard. Purification of antibodies from sera was confirmed by electrophoresis. Construction of nanoparticles was proved by TEM and FT-IR methods. Conjugation of antibodies to gold nanoparticles was confirmed using XPS method. Sensitivity and specificity of gold nanoparticles for diagnosis of Candida species were 100%, for Gardnerella were 100% and 93%, and for T. vaginalis was 53.3% and 100%, respectively. Gold nanoparticle-based method is a simple, rapid, accurate, and cost-effective test for differential laboratory diagnosis of vaginal infections.

中文翻译：

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使用涂有特异性抗体的金纳米颗粒对阴道感染进行快速鉴别诊断。

由细菌，念珠菌和阴道毛滴虫引起的阴道感染，每年影响全球数百万妇女。症状和体征在三种原因引起的阴道炎的鉴别诊断中价值有限。当前用于鉴别诊断的实验室方法要么昂贵要么费时。因此，在这项工作中，已经研究了开发基于金纳米颗粒的方法以快速诊断阴道感染的方法。在兔子中产生了针对阴道感染的三个主要原因的特异性抗体。然后将抗体纯化并与金纳米颗粒偶联，并用于凝集试验中以检测阴道感染。最后，使用培养方法作为金标准，评估了该测试对阴道感染诊断的敏感性和特异性。通过电泳证实从血清中纯化抗体。通过TEM和FT-IR方法证明了纳米颗粒的构建。使用XPS方法确认了抗体与金纳米颗粒的结合。金纳米颗粒对念珠菌物种的敏感性和特异性分别为100％，加德纳氏菌为100％和93％，对阴道毛滴虫分别为53.3％和100％。基于金纳米颗粒的方法是一种简单，快速，准确且具有成本效益的测试，可用于阴道感染的鉴别实验室诊断。