Leptospirosis is a widespread zoonotic disease caused by Leptospira interrogans. Symptoms
of disease range from mild symptoms to serious complications including, jaundice,
pulmonary hemorrhage, renal and hepatic failure, which may prove fatal. Clinical presentations
of this disease are similar with other febrile illness. Therefore, rapid and appropriated
laboratory diagnostic tests are needed to aid clinical case identification. As these
reasons, objective of this study is to develop and evaluate a simple latex agglutination
test coating with recombinant leptospiral antigens, LipL32 for serodiagnosis of human
leptospirosis. Firstly, lipl32 gene was amplified from genomic DNA of Leptospira interogans
serovar Pyrogenes. Then PCR product of lipl32 gene was ligated with pGEX-2T plasmid,
generating pGRK32 recombinant plasmid. Recombinant GST-LipL32 protein was overexpressed
and subsequently purified by using Glutathione-Agarose Resin. Recombinant GST-Lipl32
protein was coated on latex beads for development latex agglutination test (LAT).
The relative sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the developed LAT were compared
with indirect immunofluorescences assay (IFA) for detection of anti-leptospiral antibodies
in 30 human leptospirosis samples, 30 healthy blood donor samples, 10 dengue fever
positive samples, 10 scrub typhus positive samples, and 10 melioidosis samples. Results
showed that the developed LAT showed sensitivity, specificity and accuracy: 66.66%,
86.66%, and 80.00%, respectively, comparing with IFA method. Moreover, Kappa analysis
showed agreement rate of the two methods were 0.421. It concluded that our developed
gave compatible result with IFA. Additionally, Our LAT are simple, rapid and suitable
for detection in the field. However, for better sensitivity, diagnostic specificity,
positive predictive value, negative predictive value, accuracy and Cohen’s kappa comparison
should be done in larger amounts of sera samples.