Prevalence of Giardia lamblia in Asymptomatic Patients by Direct Examination and ELISA Methods

Abd Al-Muhsin AL-Khayat, Fadia; Thamer Abdullah, Farah; Shhab Ahmed, Najwa

	Prevalence of Giardia lamblia in Asymptomatic Patients by Direct Examination and ELISA Methods
The Iraqi Journal of Veterinary Medicine (IJVM)
Article 16, Volume 39, Issue 1, 2015, Pages 75-80 PDF (0 K)
Authors
Fadia Abd Al-Muhsin AL-Khayat; Farah Thamer Abdullah; Najwa Shhab Ahmed
Abstract
Stool samples from 182 asymptomatic patients were collected from two hospitals in Baghdad (Al-Yarmok and Central Child) during the period from the beginning of March to the end of June/2014 and subjected to microscopic and ELISA diagnostic techniques for Giardia lamblia detection; the sensitivity and specificity for ELISA were calculated. Cysts of G. lamblia were observed in 37 and 49 stool samples of asymptomatic patients from a total 182 examined samples with prevalence recorded 20.32, 26.92% by direct examination and ELISA respectively. Of 145 samples showed negative result in microscope examination, 12 samples were positive in ELISA, sensitivity and specificity of ELISA were 75.51 and 100%. Higher prevalence rates were observed in asymptomatic children aged 2-8 years old 27.84% (22+ve/79) in contrast with 26.21% prevalence rate in asymptomatic adults aged 21-57 years old (27+ve /103). According to gender, males showed higher prevalence 28.94% (33+ve/114) while females showed lower prevalence rate 23.52% (16+ve/68). No differences in the level of infection in both age and gender were recorded. Conclusion: The superior sensitivity of the rapid enzyme assay in detecting asymptomatic cases of giardiasis when a single stool specimen is analyzed, the availability of an immunodiagnostic assay which can detect small amounts of antigens in the feces which have a potential tools to improve the diagnosis.
Keywords
Giardia lamblia; Asymptomatic giardiasis; prevalence; Diagnostic methods; ELISA

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