Molecular diagnosis of toxoplasmosis at the onset of symptomatic primary infection: A straightforward alternative to serological examinations

Abstract

A B S T R A C TMyopericarditis is a rare but well-documented clinical presentation of primary Toxoplasma gondii infection in immunocompetent patients. Here, early detection of Toxoplasma DNA in the peripheral blood by PCR allowed the diagnosis of acute toxoplasmosis while serological tests were negative. Additional serological evaluations 2 weeks later confirmed the diagnosis and showed that cardiac manifestations occurred before seroconversion. This highlights the importance of a second serological control in the case of a suspected active infection. Overall, we show here that PCR testing for Toxoplasma is a sensitive and straightforward alternative to serological examinations.

Review on the Current Trends of Toxoplasmosis Serodiagnosis in Humans

“…Its ease of application and rapidity of test results with no special equipment required makes the ICT suitable for field application. In toxoplasmosis, this technology has been used to diagnose human (Lévêque et al, 2019;Taha et al, 2019;Wassef and Abdel-Malek, 2019) and animal cases (Khan and Noordin, 2019). ICT has been shown to have a high agreement with ELISA in terms of sensitivity and specificity (Terkawi et al, 2013;Ybañez, Kyan and Nishikawa, 2020).…”

Toxoplasma myocarditis: An atypical case in an immunocompetent patient

“…In cases where myocarditis is suspected and EMB is not available, addition of serum PCR performed via reference laboratory (e.g. University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, WA or Mayo Clinic Laboratories, Rochester, MN) has also been used in diagnosis and can increase diagnostic sensitivity in cases presenting prior to seroconversion [14] .…”

Serum IgG Anti-Toxoplasma gondii Antibody Concentrations Do Not Correlate Nested PCR Results in Blood Donors

“…The diagnosis of infection by T. gondii is essentially serological but there are number of published papers demonstrating that the high sensitivity of molecular methods can offer more accurate results on the investigation of infection by this parasite (Mattos et al, 2011;Brenier-Pinchart et al, 2015;Robert-Gangneux et al, 2015;Camilo et al, 2017;Murata et al, 2017;Roux et al, 2018;Greigert et al, 2019;Lévêque et al, 2019;Pleyer et al, 2019). The combination of serology and molecular methods has been used to improve the diagnosis of infection by T. gondii.…”