An adsorption procedure to increase the specificity of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays for Lyme disease without decreasing sensitivity.

Previous efforts to use adsorption techniques to enhance the specificity of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays for antibodies to the spirochete that causes Lyme disease resulted in unacceptable reductions in assay sensitivity. We present here evidence that preadsorption of serum with Escherichia coli can enhance test specificity without significantly reducing test sensitivity.