Background: Dense population and poor sanitation makes enteric fever is a endemic disease in developing countries like India. Widal agglutination test is the popular test and it remains a cornerstone in diagnosing enteric fever. In endemic regions the normal healthy individual contains antibodies which will react with variable titre in the Widal test, due to a past exposure and give false positive results. Determining the base line titre value is very important and the present study aim to determine the average baseline titre of the apparently healthy population in the region of Pondicherry, India.

Materials & Methods: Blood samples were collected from healthy individuals (n=500) and analysed for the presence of antibodies using Widal test.

Results: Out of 152 sera which showed positive to S.typhi ‘O’ agglutinins, titre of >1:20 was seen in 22(4.4%) sera, a titre of 1:40 was seen in 128(25.6%), titre of 1:80 was seen in 2(0.4%). Amongst 164 sera positive for S.typhi ‘H’ agglutinins, 14 (2.8%) showed agglutination up to 1in 20 titre, 37 (7.4%) up to 1in 40 and 113 (22.6%) up to 1in 80. The agglutinating titre of 1:40 for the AH titre against Salmonella serotype Paratyphi A was seen in 8(1.6%) samples, a titre of 1:40 was seen in 4(0.8%) samples. Among 9 samples 5 (1.0%) samples were positive for anti ‘BH’ of Salmonella serotype Paratyphi B in the titre of 1in 20 and 4 (0.8%) samples were in 1 in 40 titre.

Keywords: Widal test, enteric fever, pondicherry

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Dr Revathy N

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