A new coagglutination test for detecting pneumococcal C-polysaccharide

Abstract
A new coagglutination test (PnC-CoA) for detecting pneumococcal C-polysaccharide (PnC) was compared with a commercial kit for detecting capsular polysaccharide using sputum samples from 105 patients with pneumonia. The sensitivity obtained with Pn-CCoA was 95.8 % and with the commercial kit 83.3 %; the specificity was 96.5 % and 91.2 %, respectively. The PnC-CoA is simple to perform and it is a rapid, sensitive and specific test for detecting Streptococcus pneumoniae in sputa from adult patients with pneumonia.