Testing specificity of Schistosoma mansoni tegumental antigen in the immunodiagnosis of Schistosoma­ infected patients.

Abstract

Schistosomiasis is one of the most wide-spread parasitic infection. The disease is endemic in 75 countries with about 600 million people at risk of infection. Despite mass treatment campaigns, schistosomiases remain endemic and a significant prevalence of the disease still exists.

Detection of either S. mansoni egg in stool or circulating schistosome antigens have shown some false negative results, meanwhile, detection schistosome specific antibodies in serum has proven to be more reliable and sensitive mean in the diagnosis of schistosomiasis mansoni .

The mm of this work was testing the reactivity and cross reactivity of tegumental antigen of S. mansoni with sera of patients infected with chronic schistosomiasis, fascioliasis, hydatid disease and ascariasis.

For this research a group of 117 subjects were selected from Theodor Bilharz Research Institute, Tropical department in Kasr El-Aini and Institute of Research for Tropical medicine.

The selected subjects were divided into 3 groups:

• Group I : composed of 57 chronic S. mansoni infected patients

• Group II: Patients infected with parasites other than S. mansoni,

which were subdivided into:

Ua, composed of26 Fasciola infected patients lib , composed of 16 hydatid infected patients lie, composed of I 0 Ascaris infected patients • Group III: composed of I 0 normal control group.