Molecular diagnosis of Entamoeba spp. versus microscopy in the Great Cairo

• Published in: Acta parasitologica Vol. 62; no. 1; pp. 188 - 191
• Main Authors: Roshdy, Mohamed H., Abd El-Kader, Nour M., Ali-Tammam, Marwa, Fuentes, Isabel, Mohamed, Magdy M., El-Sheikh, Nabila A., Rubio, Jose Miguel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.03.2017; De Gruyter; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Abscesses; Amoebiasis; Animal Systematics/Taxonomy/Biogeography; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Cairo; Disease; DNA, Protozoan - genetics; Ecology; Egypt; Egypt - epidemiology; Entamoeba - cytology; Entamoeba - genetics; Entamoebiasis - diagnosis; Entamoebiasis - epidemiology; Entamoebiasis - parasitology; Humans; Laboratories; Medical Microbiology; Microbiology; Microscopy; molecular diagnosis; Mortality; Parasitology; Polymerase chain reaction; Cairo Egypt; United States > US; Madrid Spain; Egypt; Spain; Amoebiasis; Cairo; Egypt; molecular diagnosis
• ISSN: 1230-2821; 1896-1851
• DOI: 10.1515/ap-2017-0022

Amoebiasis is a human disease produced by Entamoeba histolytica which causes widespread mortality and morbidity worldwide through diarrheal disease and abscess establishment in parenchymal tissues such as liver, lung, and brain. The true prevalence of infection is unknown for most areas of the world due to the difficulty to characterise Entamoeba histolytica versus other non-pathogenic amoebas with identical morphology, as E ntamoeba dispar , and E ntamoeba moshkovskii . To overcome microscopy misidentification issues, we tested a nested multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and a real-time PCR on 194 stool samples collected from incoming dysentery patients in Cairo hospitals diagnosed with E. histolytica by microscopy. Nested PCR showed only 20 (10.3%) samples positive to E. histolytica and 17 (8.7%) to E. dispar . The real-time PCR detected only 19 and 11 samples positive to E. histolytica and E. dispar respectively, showing less sensitivity than the nested PCR. The data show that prevalence of E. histolytica in Cairo is lower when specific diagnosis methods are used instead of traditional microscopy, allowing to differentiate between morphologically identical human amoebas species.