Abstract: Objective To establish a simple and fast diagnostic assay for schistosomiasis． Methods Based on the immunochromatographic technique and the principle of indirect assay of ELISA， using soluble egg antigen （SEA） of Schistosoma japonicum and mouse anti?鄄human monoclonal antibody labelled with red latex as color developing agents， a latex immunochromatographic assay （DLIA） was developed. Serum samples from 69 schistosomiasis patients were detected by DLIA. Tested were also 264 sera from healthy people， 15 sera from clonorchiasis patients， 8 sera from patients with angiostrongyliasis cantonensis， 11 sera from patients with intestinal nematode infection and 19 sera from paragonimiasis patients. ELISA was used as a parallel contro1． Results The sensitivity for detecting schistosomiasis antibodies with DLIA and ELISA was 94.2％ （65/69） and 95.7％ （66/69），respectively （χ2＝0.15， P＞0.05）. The specificity in examining healthy persons was 97.4％ （257/264） and 94.7％ （250/264），respectively （χ2＝2.43， P＞0.05）. No cross reaction was found with the sera of clonorchiasis， intestinal nematode infection and angiostrongyliasis. The cross reaction rate with paragonimiasis of the two assays was 42.1% （8/19） and 47.4% （9/19），respectively （χ2＝0.11， P＞0.05）. Conclusion DLIA is a simple， fast， sensitive and specific assay for the diagnosis of schistosomiasis.

Key words: Schistosomiasis, Diagnosis, Latex, Immunochromatographic assay