ABSTRACT
Aim: Present hospital based study was carried out at our tertiary care centre with an aim to study the distribution of Cryptosporidium species subtypes in patients with complaints of diarrhea
Background: Cryptosporidium species are one of the important causative agents of parasitic diarrhea, amongst which Cryptosporidium hominis [C.hominis] and Cryptosporidium parvum [C.parvum] are the two major species that are associated with human cryptosporidiosis
Methods: Four hundred and fifty [n=450] diarrheic patients complaining of different types of diarrhea were enrolled in the present study. Both microscopic and molecular diagnostic methods were used for the detection as well as for identification of Cryptosporidium species and its speciation and subtyping
Results: Forty one [n=41] and forty three [n=43] patients were positive for Cryptosporidium species by microscopy and Polymerase chain reaction [PCR] assay respectively. Of these 43 cases, 70% [30/43] were identified as C. hominis and 21% [9/43] was as C. parvum, 7% [3/43] was as Cryptosporidium felis [C.felis] and 2% [1/43] as Cryptopsoridium viatorum [C. viatorum] respectively . Upon subtyping of C. hominis and C. parvum, 16 subtypes belonging to 8 different subtype families could be identified. The frequency of different families were Ia [13%, 5/39], Ib [15%, 6/39], Id [18%, 7/39], Ie [30%, 12/39] and IIa [5%, 2/39], IIc [8%, 3/39], IId [8%, 3/39] and IIe [3%, 1/39]
Conclusion: Our study results strongly suggest and reinforces the fact that most of the human cryptosporidiosis is anthroponotic and we expect that present molecular epidemiological data will provide more insight to unravel the changing clinical paradigm of human cryptosporidiosis at large
ABSTRACT
Intestinal parasitic infections are one of the major causes of diarrhea in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) seropositive individuals. Antiretroviral therapy has markedly reduced the incidence of many opportunistic infections, but parasite-related diarrhea still remains frequent and often underestimated especially in developing countries. The present hospital-based study was conducted to determine the spectrum of intestinal parasitosis in adult HIV/AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) patients with or without diarrhea with the levels of CD4+ T-cell counts. A total of 400 individuals were enrolled and were screened for intestinal parasitosis. Of these study population, 200 were HIV seropositives, and the remaining 200 were HIV uninfected individuals with or without diarrhea. Intestinal parasites were identified by using microscopy as well as PCR assay. A total of 130 (32.5%) out of 400 patients were positive for any kinds of intestinal parasites. The cumulative number of parasite positive patients was 152 due to multiple infections. A significant association of Cryptosporidium (P<0.001) was detected among individuals with CD4+ T-cell counts less than 200 cells/microl.