Comparison of results of two methods for laboratory diagnosing lyme borreliosis- PCR method and ELISA

Bc. Radka Vargová Comparison of results of two methods for laboratory diagnosing lyme borreliosis - PCR methods and ELISA Diploma thesis Charles University in Prague, Facutly of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Specialist in laboratory methods At present time the Lyme disease is relatively wide-spread affection. Its agent is spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato and its most eminent vector in Europe is the tick Ixodes ricinus. In the theoretical part of my thesis I decribed the basic characteristics of the genus Borrelia, its antigenic structure, epidemology and pathogenesis, disease vectors, clinical sypmtoms of the infection and possibilities of laboratory diagnostics. My thesis is aimed at comparison of dignostics of Lyme disease by using serological method ELISA and using method PCR. It was used 113 anonymized samples of patients for analyse. The samples were examined for the presence of the antibody against Borrelia in classes IgG and IgM and by using real-time PCR method they were examined for the presence of DNA pathogenic Borrelia. The experimental part of the thesis describes realization of the methods, which we have used for diagnostics of Lyme disease. In the results part is claimed that we noticed only one positive result within detection of Borrelia DNA (total positivity 0,88%). The..