The prevalence study of Intestinal Giardiasis and detection of Giardia antigen by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in stool specimens in chronic renal failure patients on hemodialysis

Abstract

Background & Aim: Intestinal parasites infections are an important cause of morbidity and mortality in immunodeficiency patients including patients with chronic renal failure on hemodialysis. Intestinal Giardiasis is one of the most common diarrheal intestinal parasites in the world.

The study aims to determine the prevalence of Giardia intestinal in chronic renal failure on hemodialysis and determine the sensitivity and specificity of a commercial ELISA test for detection of Giardia intestinal in stool.  

Materials & Methods: The study included 90 stool samples from patients attending the dialysis department at AL-Mowasat university hospital in Damascus (49 female, 41 males) aged  between 25 -75 years , stool samples were examined microscopically and the ELISA test  was applied to determine the sensitivity and specificity compared to microscopy.

Results : the result showed : The prevalence rate in the research sample by microscopy examination was 15.6% (6.7%female, 8.9% males), the prevalence was the highest 6.7% within the age group 45-54 year (p value 0.000) , while The prevalence rate by ELISA was 18.9% (7.8%female, 11.1% males), the prevalence was the highest 8.9% within the age group 45-54 year (p value 0.000), the sensitivity of the ELISA test versus microscopy was 82.4%and the specificity was 100% .

Conclusions : the statistics study showed the presence of Giardia intestinal with a high prevalence in the research sample and it showed a high sensitivity and specificity of the ELISA test compared to direct microscopy.

 Recommendations: a routine stool examination for these patients to detect and treat the presence of Giardiasis and use ELISA in epidemiology surveys and to confirm the diagnosis in patients with typical clinical symptoms of giardiasis but negative results by direct microscopy.