Abstract
Background: Different diagnostic techniques have been employed in the diagnosis of schistosomiasis. However, they are far from ideal regarding early diagnosis of schistosomiasis. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques have been tried to improve the direct detection of schistosomiasis.
Objective: Evaluation of the diagnostic performance of direct amplification of S. mansoni DNA in the early prepatent period in experimentally infected mice by PCR using un-extracted DNA as PCR template, compared with pre-extracted S. mansoni DNA samples.
Methods: Mice were infected by 100±10 S. mansoni cercariae. Three mice were sacrificed every 3 or 4 days for 5 weeks . Whole blood samples were used for direct amplification without prior extraction. Serum samples were pooled and extracted DNA was detected by both KAPA blood PCR kit and conventional PCR methods. The diagnostic performance was compared between the two methods.
Results: The results showed that diagnosis of S. mansoni utilizing pre extracted DNA was superior to direct amplification of DNA, bypassing nucleic acid extraction which failed to detect S. mansoni DNA from any of the examined samples. Pre extracted DNA was detected in all samples from the second day post infection by the two used PCR techniques.
Conclusions: These results indicate that S. mansoni infection can not be efficiently detected directly by PCR without pre-extraction of DNA from whole blood samples using KAPA blood PCR kit.