A novel and sensitive method to monitor helminth infections by faecal sampling

Eberl, Matthias ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9390-5348, al-Sherbiny, M., Hagan, P., Ljubojevic, S., Thomas, A. W. and Wilson, R. A. 2002. A novel and sensitive method to monitor helminth infections by faecal sampling. Acta Tropica 83 (2) , pp. 183-187. 10.1016/s0001-706x(02)00089-x

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

The Kato-Katz technique is the method routinely used for diagnosing human schistosomiasis mansoni by estimating faecal egg burdens. To improve the sensitivity of faecal diagnosis, we established and validated a novel separation technique based upon the greater density of viable schistosome eggs relative to faecal material. Subsequently, it was used for faecal examination of 27 schistosomiasis patients in El-Sharkia, Egypt, with Kato-Katz smears as criterion standard. Low intensity infections (<100 eggs/g) were only detected by our technique. Moreover, triple Kato-Katz analysis on consecutive samples still missed 7.4% of all human patients, whereas the new method diagnosed 100% of samples correctly on second analysis. We conclude that in endemic areas many patients are being systematically missed by routine diagnosis. Moreover, the sensitivity of our method allows its use in proposed pre-clinical and clinical vaccine trials in non-human primates and humans, where reliable estimates of faecal egg counts are essential.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Medicine Systems Immunity Research Institute (SIURI)
Subjects:	R Medicine > R Medicine (General) R Medicine > RZ Other systems of medicine
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0001-706X
Last Modified:	27 Oct 2022 09:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/64099

Citation Data

Cited 27 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item