Differences in microscopic diagnosis of helminths and intestinal protozoa among diagnostic centres

Excerpt

Sub-specialized tropical medicine laboratories are essential for the accurate diagnosis of many tropical infections that may not be correctly diagnosed in conventional laboratories. However, processing and examination of ‘identical’ biofluid specimens such as blood, stool and urine at different laboratories often results in considerable diagnostic discrepancies. For example, interlaboratory differences have been documented in the microscopic examination of malaria slides [1], and discrepancies have been observed when comparing different rapid tests for malaria diagnosis [2]. The aim of this study was to compare the results obtained at sub-specialized tropical medicine laboratories for the microscopic diagnosis of helminths and intestinal protozoa in faecal samples obtained from a rural community in an endemic area of sub-Saharan Africa. The study compared two European tropical disease diagnostic centres with each other and one of the two European centres with a West African centre. …