Prevalence of intestinal protozoa in an aborigine community in Pahang, Malaysia

The objective was to estimate the prevalence of intestinal protozoa among the aborigines and to determine the problems regarding the infection. The study was carried out in January 2006 in Pos Senderut, Pahang, Malaysia. Samples of faeces were collected from children and adults and these were fixed in PVA and trichrome staining was carried out. From the 130 individuals studied, 94 (72.3%) were positive with at least one intestinal protozoa. Nine intestinal protozoa namely Blastocystis hominis, Giardia lamblia, Entamoeba histolytica, Entamoeba coli, Endolimax nana, Entamoeba hartmani, Entamoeba polecki, Iodamoeba butschlii and Chilomastix mesnili were detected. The prevalent species were B. hominis (52.3%), followed by G. lamblia (29.2%), E. coli (26.2%) and E. histolytica (18.5%). The other species ranged from 1.5 to 10.8%. Among the positive samples, mixed infection with E. histolytica and G. lamblia was 3.8%, E. histolytica and B. hominis was 15.4%, G. lamblia and B. hominis was 17.7%. Triple infection of E. histolytica, G. lamblia and B. hominis was 3.1%. The infection was more prevalent in children below 10 years age group (45.4%) and lowest in the age above 60 years (3.8%). The high prevalence was attributable to poor environmental management, poor personal hygiene and lack of health education.

Use of molecular tools to distinguish Entamoeba histolytica and Entamoeba dispar infection among the aborigines in Cameron Highlands

Amoebiasis is an infectious diseased caused by parasitic one-celled protozoan called Entamoeba histolytica. Numerous protozoa also can inhabit the gastro-intestinal tract of human. Majority of these protozoa are non-pathogenic commensals or only causes disease under certain circumstances. Morphologically, E. histolytica, the invasive form, share the same characteristic with the nonpathogenic form, E. dispar. Both strains can be distinguished by using DNA identification. Many previous researches in Malaysia only reported infection with E. histolytica infection. Therefore in this study we tried to classify infection among the aborigines in Cameron Highland as true E. histolytica or E. dispar by Nested Polymerase Chain Reaction (Nested PCR) and Restriction enzyme (RE) digestion. Results showed that 31 samples were positive by microscopic examination, however of these 28 (13.2%) samples were positive for E. histolytica and 12 (5.6%) samples were positive for E. dispar by molecular tools.