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Background In 2004 and 2005 a total of 38 cases of human rabies transmitted by the hematophagous bat Desmodus rotundus were registered in the Brazilian state of Pará; 23 (60.5%) cases occurred in the northeastern region. Because of this, a serological investigation for the antibodies of rabies virus was performed in municipalities of the northeastern state of Pará, in order to assess whether the virus was circulating among different bat species. Methods Bats were collected in 2009 with mist-nets during the rainy and dry seasons and blood samples were collected for the serological survey. Results A total of 307 serum samples were obtained representing 28 bat species. The number of seropositives was high (50.8%, 156/307) and was significantly higher during the rainy season (67.4%, 95/141). No significant difference in rates was found between male and female or adult and juvenile. Seropositive individuals were recorded in 24 species sampled, the most prominent being Artibeus planirostris, with 52.2% (24/46) positive individuals. Conclusion The serological proportion reported in this paper in a large numbers of individuals indicates that the rabies virus circulates quite actively in the study region, but, because of the production of antibodies, the expression of the disease in these individuals is low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: We previously standardized the direct agglutination test (DAT) to detect anti-Leishmania chagasi promastigote antibodies (DAT-LPC) with good sensitivity and specificity for diagnosing visceral leishmaniasis (VL). In this paper, we present a technical upgrade by introducing some modifications into the antigen preparation. This antigen was evaluated in DAT (DAT-Mod) using 61 sera samples from VL patients and 96 samples from patients with other diseases. The DAT-Mod presented a cut-off of 1:100, satisfactory reproducibility (VC <5.8), sensitivity of 93.4%, specificity of 96.9%, and diagnostic efficiency of 95.5%. The improvement in antigen preparation reduced inter-batch variations and resulted in a high test performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]