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A Concentration Method for Demonstrating Microfilariae in Blood

The increasing importance of the filarial diseases and the difficulties in their early clinical diagnosis have created a need for a simple rapid method of demonstrating microfilariae when they are present in the blood stream in small numbers.

Using the microfilariae of Dirofilaria immitis (the dog heart worm), we have examined the various methods of microscopic diagnosis which have been described in the literature (table 1). Because no method seemed at once simple, rapid, capable of giving quantitative concentration of larger amounts of blood and also adapted to a non-fatiguing examination of a large number of samples, the following method was evolved.

Four ml. venous blood are drawn and ejected into a tube containing 0.01 ml. heparin solution (Liquaemin, Roche-Organon Inc. 1 ml. contains 10 mgm. purified heparin). Four ml. 2 per cent saponin in distilled water are added and the contents of the tube are gently mixed until hemolysis is complete.

Received May 26, 1945.
¹ Major, Medical Corps, AUS.

² Captain, Sanitary Corps, AUS.