Effective Diagnostic Marker for Serodiagnosis of Toxoplasma gondii Infection: New Developments and Perspectives

Toxoplasmosis is a prevalent parasitic infection caused by an obligate intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Various methods have been established in the laboratory diagnosis of toxoplasmosis. Among these methods, serological tests are common and provide satisfactory results. However, producing reliable reagents and standard antigen remains difficult and expensive. Replacing native antigens in all current diagnostic kits with standard and reliable reagents are speculated to achieve more sensitive and specific detection that can significantly improve the assay performance. This review provides updated data on toxoplasmosis serodiagnosis. It focuses on the recent trends of producing reliable and standard antigens that have been used in the serological tests of toxoplasmosis, as well as the future direction in this field

Prevalence of intestinal protozoan parasites among school children in Africa:a systematic review and meta-analysis

INTRODUCTION: Parasitic infections, especially intestinal protozoan parasites (IPPs) remain a significant public health issue in Africa, where many conditions favour the transmission and children are the primary victims. This systematic review and meta-analysis was carried out with the objective of assessing the prevalence of IPPs among school children in Africa. METHODS: Relevant studies published between January 2000 and December 2020 were identified by systematic online search on PubMed, Web of Science, Embase and Scopus databases without language restriction. Pooled prevalence was estimated using a random-effects model. Heterogeneity of studies were assessed using Cochrane Q test and I(2) test, while publication bias was evaluated using Egger’s test. RESULTS: Of the 1,645 articles identified through our searches, 46 cross-sectional studies matched our inclusion criteria, reported data from 29,968 school children of Africa. The pooled prevalence of intestinal protozoan parasites amongst African school children was 25.8% (95% CI: 21.2%-30.3%) with E. histolytica/ dispar (13.3%; 95% CI: 10.9%-15.9%) and Giardia spp. (12%; 95% CI: 9.8%-14.3%) were the most predominant pathogenic parasites amongst the study participants. While E. coli was the most common non-pathogenic protozoa (17.1%; 95% CI: 10.9%-23.2%). CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed a relatively high prevalence of IPPs in school children, especially in northern and western Africa. Thus, poverty reduction, improvement of sanitation and hygiene and attention to preventive control measures will be the key to reducing protozoan parasite transmission

Chronic Trichuris trichiura Infection Presenting as Ileocecal Valve Swelling Mimicking Malignancy

A 46-year-old man presented with a history of passing bright red blood per rectum over the last one month. He also had on and off diarrhea with visible mucus in the stool for two months' duration. Further history was unremarkable, and physical examination revealed hemorrhoids which were subsequently banded. A colonoscopy was arranged in view of the prolonged diarrhea whereby an edematous and swollen ileocecal valve was seen. This was shown to be due to Trichuris trichiura infection, confirmed on histopathological examination of biopsies taken from the site. The patient was started on oral albendazole treatment and has been asymptomatic on latest followup. This case illustrates an accidental finding of T. trichuria infection on colonoscopic examination, which was done to investigate the patient's prolonged diarrhea

Occurrence of intestinal parasitic contamination in selected consumed local raw vegetables and fruits in Kuantan, Pahang

Intestinal parasitic infections are one of the most common human diseases that cause serious health and economic issues in many developing and developed countries. Raw vegetables and fruits play an important role in transmitting parasites into humans. Hence, the aim of this study is to investigate the parasitological contamination of the commonly consumed selected local leafy vegetables and fruits in Kuantan, Malaysia. One kilogram of local consumed-raw vegetables and fruits were collected randomly from Kuantan wet market (Pasar Tani) during monsoon seasons (November 2014-January 2014) and dry seasons (February 2015- April 2015). Standard wet mount procedure and modified Ziehl-Neelsen stain were used for the detection of parasites. In the present study, the examination of vegetables revealed five different species of parasites. The vegetables samples collected from Kuantan’s wet market were positive for both helminths and protozoa. However, the fruits samples were negative for parasitic contamination. Pegaga was the most contaminated leafy vegetables in this study and Strongyloides was the most frequently found parasite. Furthermore, there was a high diversity in the type of observed parasites during the dry season as compared to monsoon season. Therefore, further action should be taken to reduce the occurrence of parasitic contamination in vegetables by implementing the principles of good agriculture practices and improving the water treatment efficacy. Jangkitan parasit usus adalah salah satu penyakit manusia yang lazimnya menyebabkan masalah kesihatan yang serius dan mengakibatkan isu-isu ekonomi di negara-negara maju dan membangun. Sayur-sayuran mentah dan buah-buahan memainkan peranan yang penting sebagai medium jangkitan parasit ke dalam manusia. Oleh itu, tujuan kajian ini adalah untuk menyiasat pencemaran parasitologi daripada sayur-sayuran berdaun dan buah-buahan yang biasa dimakan serta dipilih penduduk tempatan di Kuantan, Malaysia. Sebanyak satu kilogram sayur-sayuran tempatan yang dimakan mentah dan buah-buahan telah dikumpulkan secara rawak dari Kuantan pasar basah (Pasar Tani) semasa musim tengkujuh (November 2014-Januari 2014) dan musim kering (Februari 2015- April 2015). Prosedur lazim ‘wet mount’ dan dimodifikasi perwarnaan Ziehl-Neelsen telah digunakan untuk mengesan parasit. Dalam kajian ini, pemeriksaan sayur-sayuran mendedahkan lima spesies parasite yang berbeza. Sampel sayur-sayuran sampel yang diambil daripada pasar basah Kuantan adalah positif untuk kedua-dua helmin dan protozoa. Walau bagaimanapun, sampel buah-buahan adalah negatif untuk pencemaran parasit. Pegaga merupakan sayuran yang paling tercemar dalam kajian ini dan Strongyloides adalah parasit yang paling kerap ditemui. Tambahan pula, terdapat kepelbagaian yang tinggi dalam jenis parasit telah diperhatikan semasa musim kering berbanding musim tengkujuh. Oleh itu, tindakan lanjut perlu diambil untuk mengurangkan berlakunya pencemaran parasit didalam sayur-sayuran dengan melaksanakan prinsip-prinsip amalan pertanian yang baik serta meningkatkan keberkesanan rawatan air perlu dipertingkat

Automatic Gram Staining for Sputum Slide

The Gram stain is the most important and universally used staining technique in the bacteriology laboratory. Gram staining method is used to do staining of the clinical material or the bacteria from colonies on laboratory media and provide a direct visualization of the morphology of the organisms based on their reactions to the chemical present in stains. A sputum sample slide need to be stained before the quality of the sputum sample is determined. However, due to human inconsistency, some of the slides are heavily stained with dark color whereas some of it is lightly stained. This inconsistency would create a difficulty for automated sputum quality system using image processing. Therefore, an automated gram staining for sputum slide is needed in order to standardize the slide staining. The automated Gram-staining will undergo staining, washing, and drying process. Each process periods are controlled by a timer built in the microcontroller. The analysis is done on the accuracy of the position of the slide stain, the consistency of the amounts of staining solution drop on the slide and the time efficiency of this automated system is compared to manual operation

Plasmodium falciparum isolate with histidine-rich protein 2 gene deletion from Nyala City, Western Sudan.

In remote areas of malaria-endemic countries, rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) have dramatically improved parasitological confirmation of suspected malaria cases, especially when skilled microscopists are not available. This study was designed to determine the frequency of Plasmodium falciparum isolates with histidine-rich protein 2 (pfhrp2) gene deletion as one of the possible factors contributing to the failure of PfHRP2-based RDTs in detecting malaria. A total of 300 blood samples were collected from several health centres in Nyala City, Western Sudan. The performance of PfHRP2-based RDTs in relation to microscopy was examined and the PCR-confirmed samples were investigated for the presence of pfhrp2 gene. A total of 113 out of 300 patients were P. falciparum positive by microscopy. Among them, 93.81% (106 out of 113) were positives by the PfHRP2 RDTs. Seven isolates were identified as false negative on the basis of the RDTs results. Only one isolate (0.9%; 1/113) potentially has pfhrp2 gene deletion. The sensitivity and specificity of PfHRP2-based RDTs were 93.81% and 100%, respectively. The results provide insights into the pfhrp2 gene deletion amongst P. falciparum population from Sudan. However, further studies with a large and systematic collection from different geographical settings across the country are needed

An enhanced classification of bacteria pathogen on microscopy images using deep learning

Classification of bacteria pathogens has significant importance issues in the clinical microbiology field. The taxonomy identification of bacteria is usually recognized through microscopy imaging. The classical procedure has the lacks detection and a high misclassification rate. Recently, computer-aided detection is an applied deep learning approach that has been growing to improve classification quality. This study proposed an enhanced classification technique to recognize the bacterial pathogen images. The DensNet201 pre-trained CNN architecture has been used for deep feature extraction and classification. In addition, the transfer learning with the freeze layer technique applied can enhance the accuracy performance and reduce the false-positive rate. The experimental result can improve state-of-the-art decision-making

Rapid bacterial colony classification using deep learning

Bacterial colonies infection is one of the causes of bloodstream disease, and it can be a fatality. Therefore, medical diagnoses require fast identification and classification of organisms. Artificial Intelligence with deep learning (DL) can now be developed as a rapid bacterial classification. The research aims to combine deep learning and support vector machines (SVM). The ResNet-101 model of the DL algorithm extracted the image’s features using transfer learning then classified by the SVM classifier. According to the experimental results, this model had 99.61% accuracy, 99.58% recall, 99.58% precision, and 99.97% specificity. The technique presented might enhance clinical decision-making