Interest in the detection of specific anti-Pneumocystis jirovecii antibodies has emerged as less-invasive alternative diagnostic approaches. Here is presented the performance of an ELISA based on a recombinant synthetic multi-epitope kexin 1 (Kex1) antigen of P. jirovecii, previously developed. Results showed that IgM anti-Kex1 levels were found significantly increased in patients with Pneumocystis pneumonia (PcP) compared with non-PcP cases (p < 0.001), allowing a diagnostic performance of PcP with a 70.8% sensitivity and a 75.0% specificity. These results suggest that this Kex1-based ELISA is a promising tool toward the serodiagnosis of PcP when the standard methods are difficult to perform.

作为侵袭性较低的替代诊断方法，人们对检测特异抗肺孢子虫肺炎支原体抗体的兴趣已经显现。这里提出的ELISA的基于重组合成的多表位可心1（KEX1）抗原的性能P.卡氏肺囊虫，以前开发的。结果表明，与非PcP病例相比，肺炎性肺囊炎（PcP）患者的IgM抗Kex1水平显着升高（p <0.001），从而诊断PcP具有70.8％的敏感性和75.0％的特异性。这些结果表明，当难以执行标准方法时，这种基于Kex1的ELISA是对PcP进行血清学诊断的有前途的工具。