LÍMITES DE DETECCIÓN CLÍNICA DE ANTIESTREPTOLISINA O EN ESCOLARES PORTADORES ASINTOMÁTICOS DE ESTREPTOCOCOS BETAHEMOLÍTICOS, MUNICIPIO GIRARDOT, ARAGUA, VENEZUELA.

Streptolysin O is a toxin produced by Group A betahemolytic streptococcus (GABHS) or Streptococcus pyogenes, and others as group C (GCBHS) and G (GGBHS). The immunological diagnosis of infections by these microorganisms is to determine the immune response to various extracellular antigens, being the antistreptolysin O (ASO) the most widely used test. In Venezuela, this test is commonly performed, although the limits of clinical detection used are not typical of our country. For this reason, these values were determined taking into account 191 schoolchildren aged 6 to 9 years of the municipality Girardot who were asymptomatic carriers of BHS. To determine the limit values of clinical detection, an immunological agglutination indirect test (passive) was performed and, once the titles were obtained, the 95th percentile was calculated. To detect asymptomatic carriers, a bacteriological study was conducted yielding a frequency of EBH of 21.47%. The immunological characterization of groups was performed by the indirect reverse agglutination method (passive), being the GCBHS the most largely isolated group (29.27%), followed by GGBHS and GABHS (both with 21.95%), betahemolytic streptococcus group B (GBBHS) (12.19%), betahemolytic streptococcus group F (GFBHS) and unclusterable streptococci (BHSU) (both with 7.31%). The clinical detection limit value for determining ASO was set at 400 IU mL, which differs from the value recommended by the commercial manufacturer of the equipment used, so normally studied patients may have been falsely diagnosed by this test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]