Introduction: Spontaneous sedimentation is an important procedure for stool examination. A modification of this technique using conical tubes was performed and evaluated. Methods: Fifty fecal samples were processed in sedimentation glass and in polypropylene conical tubes. Another 50 samples were used for quantitative evaluation of protozoan cysts. Results: Although no significant differences occurred in the frequency of protozoa and helminths detected, significant differences in protozoan cyst counts did occur. Conclusions: The use of tube predicts a shorter path in the sedimentation of the sample, increases concentration of parasites for microscopy analysis, minimizes the risks of contamination, reduces the odor, and optimizes the workspace.
An increased number of regulatory T (Treg) cells has been reported in patients with HTLV-1 and Strongyloides stercoralis co-infection, suggesting the contribution of these cells to worm survival. As Strongyloides infections have been found to be highly prevalent in chronic alcoholics, we investigated the effect of abusive ethanol ingestion on the induction of Treg cells in alcoholic patients with Strongyloides infection. Treg cells were assessed by flow cytometry in the peripheral blood of 12 healthy non-alcoholic (control) and 14 alcoholic patients (alcoholic) without Strongyloides infection and five non-alcoholics (controlSs) and five chronic alcoholics (alcoholSs) with Strongyloides infection. The results showed significantly higher frequencies of Treg cells in the alcoholic, controlSs and alcoholSs group patients than in the control group patients. However, the frequencies of Treg cells did not differ between the alcoholSs and controlSs groups. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that ethanol consumption induced an increase in the number of circulating Treg cells in chronic alcoholics in this study but was unable to potentiate the induction of these cells in alcoholics with Strongyloides infection.
Introduction:We compared feces culturing in charcoal or vermiculite to obtain Strongyloides venezuelensis larvae. Methods: Feces (5g) from infected rats was mixed with vermiculite (10g) or coal (10g) in plastic cups and incubated at 28°C for 48h. Larvae were recovered using Baermann-Moraes method. Results: Signifi cantly higher number of positive larval cultures were recovered from vermiculite than from charcoal (15/17 and 4/17, respectively; p < 0.001; 990.6 ± 307.5 and 215 ± 78.1 larvae, p = 0.027). Conclusions: Vermiculite yields more larvae and provides cleaner pellets, improving larvae identifi cation and facilitating their use for other purposes.Keywords: Charcoal. Strongyloides. Vermiculite.Cultivation of stool to obtain helminthic larvae is generally carried out with addition of different substrates or by spreading feces on plates containing solidifi ed agar nutrients 1,2 . The most commonly used culture medium is coal, which must be pure, lacking additives, and, in particular, being free from colloidal silver. Moreover, visualization of the larvae or adult worms is rendered diffi cult due to the presence of coal particles. Agar culture is laborious and requires appropriate growth medium, adequate glassware, and sterilization systems.Vermiculite is a compound formed by hydration of basaltic mineral; it has been used as a substrate for fecal culture, particularly in veterinary parasitology, as it has the advantages of being similar to soil and costing less [3][4][5][6][7] . It has also been used for growing insect 8 or nematodes larvae in order to evaluate the larvicidal effects of fungi 9-12 .Very few reports have compared the culturing of stools in vermiculite vs. that with addition of other media. Steffan et al. 13 compared the addition of vermiculite or polystyrene pellets to cultivate cattle feces and found that both signifi cantly improved growth of larvae of Ostertagia ostertagi and Cooperia oncophora as compared to the cultivation of feces without additives. Agyei 14 compared the addition of vermiculite or sawdust to cultivate cattle feces to obtain L3 larvae of Haemonchus, Trichostrongylus, Cooperia, and Oesophagostomum and concluded that the number of L3 larvae obtained from sawdust cultures was signifi cantly higher than those obtained by other techniques; the former also did not require further elaborate apparatus.As there have been no reports comparing the cultivation of feces in vermiculite and charcoal, we here compared vermiculite with charcoal as growth medium for larvae of Strongyloides venezuelensis. Feces of Wistar albino rats infected with S. venezuelensis (900 larvae, subcutaneously) were collected using an anticoprophagic cage. The eggs were quantifi ed with a McMaster chamber. Two identical samples (in terms of weight and eggs per gram) of feces were homogenized with vermiculite (Vermiculite Insulation Thermo-Acoustic Ltd., Belo Horizonte, MG; granulation 1) or coal (Tobasa Bioindustrial, Tocantinópolis, TO; granulation 4) in disposable plastic cups (200ml) at a ratio of t...
Strongyloidiasis is the most clinically important disease among the infections caused by geohelminths, seeing that this parasite can cause autoinfection. The use of nematophagous fungi like Duddingtonia flagrans, that have predation action on eggs and infecciososas forms of helminths, emerges as an alternative method for environmental control. For this reason, analyzing the viability of larvae and eggs of Strongyloides venezuelensis and the action of Duddingtonia flagrans AC001 in vermiculite, as well as the action of the nematophagous fungi in different growth stages, is important to elaborate and define the best culture conditions that favor the activity of the fungus. Two different growth conditions were applied: both eggs and AC001 fungi were added at the same time to the vermiculite (assay A) and the addition of eggs after the growth of the AC001 fungi in the vermiculite (assay B). To recover the L larvae, the Baermann-Moraes method was applied, followed by the counting of L dead and alive. At last, it was observed that the vermiculite enriched with organic material is an adequate culture medium not only for the growth of the S. venezuelensis but also for the growth of the D. flagrans fungus, being therefore, a satisfactory culture medium for tests of viability and predatory action of this fungus. It was also observed that the activity of the AC001 fungus is greater when it is growing concomitantly with the eggs, in other words, when it is in the adaptation phase.
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