Utilidad de la técnica de aglutinación directa en el diagnóstico de la infección chagásica

The direct agglutination technique for chagasic infection diagnosis is easy to perform and inexpensive. It has good sensitivity and specificity when used in conjunction with other serological and/or parasitological techniques. It has been replaced with other reactions with faster results and easiness to read (i.e. immunoenzymatic assay (ELISA) and indirect hemagglutination). Currently it is difficult to obtain commercial kits. In the present paper we present a series of cases that show the usefulness of the direct agglutination test to early determine acute and/or congenital infection and to differentiate acute from chronic infections.