Sodre FC, Moura H, Wahlquist S, Bornay-Llinares FJ, Visvesvara GS; American Society for Microbiology. General Meeting.
Abstr Gen Meet Am Soc Microbiol. 1997 May 4-8; 97: 159 (abstract no. C225).
Division of Parasitic Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA.
Microsporidia are emerging opportunistic protozoan parasites that infect patients with AIDS and cause gastrointestinal (GI) as well as disseminated microsporidiosis (DM). GI disease accounts for 30% of diarrhea in patients with AIDS. Of the several microsporidia that infect humans only Enterocytozoon bieneusi is known to cause strictly GI disease, whereas Encephalitozoon intestinalis (formerly Septata intestinalis) causes a GI as well as a DM disease involving the lungs, kidneys, and eyes. Although Weber's chromotrope technique, or modifications thereof, or Uvitex 2B or the recently developed Gram chromotrope (GC) procedure detect microsporidia spores in fecal smears and other clinical samples, they do not identify the species of microsporidia. Definitive species identification can be accomplished by electron microscopy or DNA-based procedures, but these are not readily available in many clinical laboratories. A need for an easily performed test, therefore, exists. We have identified, over the past few years, a total of 181 fecal samples that were positive for microsporidia spores. We reevaluated 120 of these samples using the GC technique. We were able to segregate these positive stools into two groups, based on the size of the spores. Because we wanted to determine whether any of these samples contain E. intestinalis, we screened them by IF using a polyclonal rabbit anti-E. intestinalis serum, at a dilution of 1:400, which had been used by us previously to identify E. intestinalis spores in the fecal smear of a patient with DM. E. intestinalis spores reacted with the antiserum and exhibited an apple green fluorescence. No intense background or cross reactions with bacteria, yeasts, or other structures present in the stool samples was seen. Spores in 22 (18.3%) of the 120 samples fluoresced, indicating that these spores belonged to E. intestinalis. Additionally, the number of spores that fluoresced in seven of these samples was substantially lower than the number of spores that were present in the GC-stained smears, indicating that these stool samples were probably derived from patients with mixed infections of E. bieneusi and E. intestinalis. Because a 1:400 dilution of this serum does not react with culture-grown E. hellem, E. cuniculi or Vittaforma corneae, we conclude that an IF test using this serum is a good alternative for the specific detection of E. intestinalis infections.
Publication Types:
Keywords:
- Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
- Animals
- Body Fluids
- Encephalitozoon
- Enterocytozoon
- Feces
- Humans
- Microsporidiosis
- Rabbits
- Specimen Handling
- Spores
- Vittaforma
Other ID:
UI: 102235249
From Meeting Abstracts