title: Laboratory Diagnosis of Echinococcus spp. in Human Patients and Infected Animals.
abstract: Among the species composing the genus Echinococcus, four species are of human clinical interest. The most prevalent species are Echinococcus granulosus and Echinococcus multilocularis, followed by Echinococcus vogeli and Echinococcus oligarthrus. The first two species cause cystic echinococcosis (CE) and alveolar echinococcosis (AE) respectively. Both diseases have a complex clinical management, in which laboratory diagnosis could be an adjunctive to the imaging techniques. To date, several approaches have been described for the laboratory diagnosis and followup of CE and AE, including antibody, antigen and cytokine detection. All of these approaches are far from being optimal as adjunctive diagnosis particularly for CE, since they do not reach enough sensitivity and/or specificity. A combination of several methods (e.g., antibody and antigen detection) or of several (recombinant) antigens could improve the performance of the adjunctive laboratory methods, although the complexity of echinococcosis and heterogeneity of clinical cases make necessary a deep understanding of the host-parasite relationships and the parasite phenotype at different developmental stages to reach the best diagnostic tool and to make it accepted in clinical practice. Standardization approaches and a deep understanding of the performance of each of the available antigens in the diagnosis of echinococcosis for the different clinical pictures are also needed. The detection of the parasite in definitive hosts is also reviewed in this chapter. Finally, the different methods for the detection of parasite DNA in different analytes and matrices are also reviewed.
authors.affiliation: IRNASA-CSIC, Salamanca, Spain.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Siles-Lucas
authors.affiliation: World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for the epidemiology, detection and control of cystic and alveolar echinococcosis, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Casulli
authors.affiliation: Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, Institute of Epidemiology, Greifswald-Insel Riems, Germany.
authors.forename: F J
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Conraths
authors.affiliation: Institute of Parasitology, Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Müller
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D019411:Clinical Laboratory Techniques; D004443:Echinococcosis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000469:parasitology; D004444:Echinococcosis, Hepatic / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000469:parasitology; D004446:Echinococcus / Q000276:immunology* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D048209:Echinococcus granulosus / Q000276:immunology / Q000302:isolation & purification; D048210:Echinococcus multilocularis / Q000276:immunology / Q000302:isolation & purification; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions; D006801:Humans; D015995:Prevalence; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D016415:Sequence Alignment
keywords: Animals; Antibodies; Antigens; Cytokines; DNA; Echinococcus; Followup; Laboratory diagnosis; Lymphoproliferation; Patients