Quantitation of Anti–Pneumocystis jiroveciAntibodies in Healthy Persons and Immunocompromised Patients

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Abstract
To facilitate studies of the epidemiology of Pneumocystis jiroveci infection in both healthy persons and immunocompromised patients, we developed a quantitative ELISA with recombinant major surface glycoprotein (MSG) fragment MSG-14, a P. jiroveci–specific protein that includes a highly conserved region of the MSG protein family. By immunoblot, all samples reacted with the carboxyl portion of MSG-14; by ELISA, immunocompromised patients with Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) who were immunocompromised for reasons other than AIDS had higher antibody levels than did either patients with AIDS with PCP (P=.01) or healthy persons (P=.005). Longitudinal observations of 8 patients with AIDS showed no correlation between time of diagnosis of Pneumocystis infection and change in antibody levels. Eleven percent (4/35) of healthy persons demonstrated a >4-fold change in antibody titers during 1 year of observation. This ELISA assay allows quantitation of anti–P. jiroveci antibodies in human serum samples and should be useful in better understanding the epidemiology of P. jiroveci infection in humans

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