Identification of Echinococcus granulosus eggs

• Published in: Diagnostic microbiology and infectious disease Vol. 44; no. 1; pp. 29 - 34
• Main Authors: Cabrera, Marta, Canova, Sergio, Rosenzvit, Mara, Guarnera, Eduardo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Elsevier Inc 01-09-2002; Elsevier
• Subjects: Animals; Argentina - epidemiology; Base Sequence; Biological and medical sciences; DNA Probes; DNA, Helminth - analysis; Dogs; Echinococcosis - diagnosis; Echinococcosis - epidemiology; Echinococcus - isolation & purification; Endemic Diseases; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects and techniques; Humans; Molecular Sequence Data; Nucleic Acid Hybridization; Polymerase Chain Reaction - methods; Protozoa; Sensitivity and Specificity; Argentina; Polymerase chain reaction; Soils; Helmintha; Plathelmintha; Isolate; Identification; Diagnosis; Cestoda; Invertebrata; Echinococcus granulosus
• ISSN: 0732-8893; 1879-0070
• DOI: 10.1016/S0732-8893(02)00414-5

The eggs from
Echinococcus granulosus contaminate the environment spreading out the disease among the herbivorous. The differential diagnosis of the embriophores recovered from the soil is very difficult by morphologic and immunologic methods. In this paper we evaluate the
EgO/DNA-IM1 for identification of
E. granulosus oncosphere DNA and differentiation of eggs from other Taeniid. The positive result of the PCR technique shows an amplification fragment of the expected size (285 bp) corresponding to the partial sequence of the mitochondrial gene of the citochrome oxidase CO1 from
E. granulosus (391 bp). The fragment is not present in the DNA from
Echinococcus multilocularis,
Taenia hydatigena,
Taenia saginata,
Diphyll-obothrium latum, and
Hymenolepis nana. It could be useful to rule out
Taenia taeniformis,
Taenia solium,
Taenia pisiformis, and
Taenia crassiceps, which sequences do not belong to the primer. We concluded that the PCR amplification employing the
EgO/DNA-IM1 primer set showed high sensitivity and specificity for the identification of
Echinococcus granulosus eggs.