Immunology
This section talks about immunologic assays used in the serologic diagnosis of infectious diseases and emerging immunological assays. It discusses about serologic diagnosis of group A streptococcal infections. It also focuses on detection of Legionella antigen by direct immunofluorescence, urinary antigen detection for Legionella spp, and laboratory diagnosis of syphilis. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease that is caused by the organism Treponema pallidum. The direct fluorescent-antibody test (DFA-TP), rapid plasma reagin (RPR), and Serodia Treponema pallidum particle agglutination test (TP-PA) are used for detecting syphilis. This section talks about detection of Borrelia burgdorferi antibodies, serodiagnosis of rickettsial infections, immunoassay detection of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, serodiagnosis of Helicobacter pylori, total viable cell counting procedure, peripheral blood mononuclear cell cryopreservation method, and lymphocyte proliferation assay. It also focuses on natural killer cell assays under which natural killer cell flow cytometry assay and natural killer cell assay are discussed, and also on quantitation of human interleukin 4, interleukin 6, and gamma interferon. Flow cytometry whole-blood intracellular-cytokine assay using phorbol myristate acetate, ionomycin, and brefeldin A are discussed in the section, along with discussions on whole-blood lymphocyte immunophenotyping using cell surface markers by flow cytometry.
