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Diagnosis of Echinococcus granulosus infection in dogs by detecting adult worms recovered post mortem or purged from the intestines after treatment with arecoline is not suitable for mass screening. Large-scale diagnosis by detection of copro-antigens is useful but only with relatively high intensity infections, and only by genus. To provide a more sensitive and specific diagnosis, a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay was developed, that amplified a target repeated sequence (EgG1 Hae III) newly identified in the genome of the common sheep strain of E. granulosus. This repeated sequence consists of approximately 6,900 copies, arranged in tandem, in groups of 2–6 repeats. The corresponding primers used in the PCR easily detected a single egg with no cross-amplification of DNA from closely related cestodes, including E. multilocularis and Taenia spp. Fecal samples from naturally infected dogs, with 2–10,000 E. granulosus worms at necropsy, were all PCR positive, while E. multilocularis or Taenia spp. positive controls as well as non-endemic controls were all PCR negative. This copro-PCR assay was demonstrated to be 100% specific and also detected all necropsy-positive E. granulosus-infected dogs. It is suggested that this copro-PCR assay has the potential for pre-mortem diagnosis of E. granulosus infection even in areas where E. granulosus and E. multilocularis are co-endemic.
Received March 13, 2003. Accepted for publication May 27, 2003.
Acknowledgment: Part of this work was carried out by Anna Branzburg as part of her M.Sc. Thesis at Hebrew University.
Financial support: This research was supported by a grant from the European Community Scientific and Technological Cooperation with Developing Countries (INCO-DC) program # IC18CT980354, and in part by the National Institutes/National Science Foundation (United States) Ecology of Infectious Disease Program # TWO 1565-02.
Authors’ addresses: Ibrahim Abbasi, Anna Branzburg, and Joseph Hamburger, Helminthology Unit, The Kuvin Centre for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, PO Box 12272, Jerusalem 91120, Israel, Fax: 972-2-675-7425, E-mail: hambu{at}cc.huji.ac.il. Maiza Campos-Ponce and Philip S. Craig, Cestode Zoonoses Research Group, School of Environmental Life Sciences, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT, United Kingdom. Sami K. Abdel Hafez, Department of Biologic Sciences, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan. Francis Raoul, Department of Environmental Biology, Institute for Environmental Sciences and Technology, World Health Organization Collaborative Center for Prevention and Treatment of Human Echinococcoses, Universite de Franche-Comté, Place Leclerc, F-25030. Besancon Cedex, France.
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