The chemokine CXCL13 is used as complement to serology in the diagnostics of Lyme neuroborreliosis (LNB). We evaluated and compared the semi-quantitative, cassette-based ReaScan CXCL13 assay with the quantitative recomBead CXCL13 assay using a collection of 209 cerebrospinal fluid samples. The categorical agreement between results interpreted as negative, grey zone, and positive by the two methods was 87%. The diagnostic sensitivity was higher using the recomBead assay, whereas specificity was higher using ReaScan. Few manual steps, and a short turn-around time with no batching of samples makes the ReaScan CXCL13 assay an attractive complement to serology in the diagnostics of LNB. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10096-021-04350-y.
CXCL13 in laboratory diagnosis of Lyme neuroborreliosis—the performance of the recomBead and ReaScan CXCL13 assays in human cerebrospinal fluid samples