Volume 24, Issue 101, January - February, 2020

Foldscope assisted microscopy for the examination of Soil Transmitted Helminths (STH)

Anil Tambekar¹, Nishant Burnase², Abhay Gaidhane³, Punit Fulzele⁴, Zahiruddin Quazi Syed^5♦

¹M.Sc. Microbiology, Research Assistant, Research & Development, Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences, Sawangi (M), Wardha, Email: anil.m.tambekar11@gmail.com
²M.Sc. Biotechnology, Junior Research Fellow, Research & Development, Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences, Sawangi (M), Wardha; Email: nishantburnase@gmail.com
³M.B.B.S. MD (Community Medicine), School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences, Sawangi (M), Wardha.; Email: abhaygaidhane@gmail.com
⁴Master of Dental Surgery, Associate Professor, Department of Pedodontics, Sharad Pawar Dental College & Hospital, Sawangi (M), Wardha; Email: punitr007@gmail.com
⁵M.B.B.S. MD (Community Medicine), Ph.D. (Community Medicine), School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences, Sawangi (M), Wardha; Email: zahirquazi@gmail.com

^♦Corresponding author
School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences, Sawangi (M), Wardha, India Email: zahirquazi@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Background: Conventional microscopic examination in the diagnosis of helminth infection is a widely accepted method worldwide (Jain et al., 2019). Though it has been a successful technique for investigating presence of helminth in a stool samples, yet it requires a good laboratory set up (Gondivkar, Bhowate, Gadbail, Sarode, et al., 2019). It is found that the epidemic of helminth infection is most frequent among the underdeveloped and developing countries which are deficient in basic medical facilities (Pordy et al., n.d.). The current study could be the solution upon this which includes the use of foldscope a kind of portable microscope. Methodology: The current study was conducted in a community setting in which the study subjects were pregnant women. The targeted parasites include Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, Nectator americans, Entamoeba histolytica and Giardia spp. In this study a foldscope was implemented for the microscopic observation of stool samples. Results: The collected stool samples were examined under conventional microscope, to find out the presence of helminth eggs, furthermore positive samples were viewed under foldscope to check its utility in the stool microscopy for the identification of helminth. It was found that the oval shaped structures of helminth eggs can be examined by both conventional microscope as well as by foldscope. Conclusion: The findings of this study meet the expected results thus; it could be concluded that foldscope would be an evolutionary asset for the diagnosis of Soil transmitted helminths.

Keywords: Foldscope, microscopy, helminth, diagnosis

Medical Science, 2020, 24(101), 102-106

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