Performance of commercially available serological ELISA test for H. pylori infection: Discrepancy between East and West

Comparison of Two Rapid Whole-Blood Tests for Helicobacter pylori Infection in Chinese Patients

“…Nevertheless, the overall performance of the two tests in Chinese patients was inferior to that in published data from the West, which reported sensitivities of 83 to 96% and specificities of 70 to 93% (2, 4-6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18). The discrepancy between Western and Asian populations in the performance of commercial serology tests for H. pylori was previously reported (3,12,18). A study from Thailand showed that a commercial ELISA (Pylori Stat; BioWhittaker, Walkerville, Md.)…”

“…was inferior to an in-house ELISA developed from local H. pylori strains (3). Our experience with commercial ELISAs (both first-and second-generation tests) in a group of Chinese patients was also disappointing (12). A recent study from Britain evaluated the performance of the Helisal rapid blood test between two groups of European and South Asian patients (18).…”