ABSTRACT

Aim:

Cystic echinococcosis is a zoonosis of great importance in respect to both public health and livestocks in Turkey. Serologic methods play major diagnostic role together with imaging met-hods. Indirect hemagglutination test (IHA) and enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) are the most sensitive serologict tests used for this disease. In this study, we retrospectively investi-gated the IHA test results of patients who applied to our laboratory with a prediagnosis of cystic echinococcosis and compared our findings with the results of the years 2001-2003, which we previously reported.

Materials and Methods:

Serologic results of 611 serum samples, belonging to suspected cys-tic echinococcosis patients, which were studied at our laboratory by using commercial IHA test between January 2004 and October 2007 were examined. The number of reactive sera which were positive at different titers and definitive positive results with titers equal to or more than 1:320 dilution were recorded.

Results:

Among 611 sera examined, 350 (%57.3) belonged to female and 261 (%42.7) belonged to male patients. By using IHA method, 80 (%14) of the serum samples were reactive at different titers. It was observed that positive samples with titers of 1:320 and above, consisted of 23 (46.9) female and 26 (%53.1) male patients’ sera.

Conclusion:

In this study, like 2001-2003 period, most of the cystic echinococcosis patients who applied to our laboratory were females. The rate of reactive sera were similar, but unlike the prece-eding period, the ratio of male patients against female patients were greater.