Parasitological Diagnosis

Abstract

When we refer to diagnosis of schistosomiasis or any other disease, a general perception is to detect infection or disease either in man or his domestic animals—now extended to wild animals or any vertebrate host. Though this approach is able to identify disease status of the patient and is followed in the hospitals, it fails to inform about origin of the infection. There are various aims of diagnosing schistosomiasis—the main is confirming the infection for prescribing specific drug by the physician to the patient for the cure. However, parasitologists, epidemiologists, biochemists, pharmacologists, and immunologists are interested in the disease for other reasons also and require additional information beside presence of schistosome eggs in fecal samples. It is important, particularly for studying epidemiology or control, to know origin or nidus of schistosomiasis which is carried out by recovering cercariae from naturally infected snails. Diagnosis at these two ends requires altogether different tools. We are discussing, in this chapter, diagnosis in the vertebrate hosts. Diagnosis in snails is dealt with elsewhere.