Bovine fascioliasis is an important zoonotic parasitic disease that causes significant economic losses to the livestock industry. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and risk factors of bovine fascioliasis in Kelantan. In this cross-sectional study, a total of 308 stool and blood samples of farmed cattle were collected from December 2017 to June 2018. The stool samples were examined microscopically for the presence of Fasciola spp. eggs following a formalin-ether sedimentation process. The blood samples were subjected to a commercial ELISA kit (Bio-X-Diagnostic, Rochefort, Belgium) for the detection of anti-Fasciola IgG antibody. The association between coprological findings and risk factors was determined using Pearson's chi-square (χ2). The coproprevalence and seroprevalence of bovine fascioliasis was 14.6% and 37.3%, respectively. There were significant (P < 0.05) associations between the risk of infections and the sex, type of feedings, anthelmintic treatment and farm hygiene. Female cattle (OR: 3.104; 95% CI: 1.265, 7.615), feeding by grazing (OR: 4.458; 95% CI: 1.823, 10.90), untreated cattle (OR: 3.833; 95% CI: 1.620, 9.071), non-schedule anthelminthic treatment (OR: 3.927; 95% CI: 1.685, 9.152) and farm that have never been cleaned (OR: 2.829; 95% CI: 1.428, 5.608) showed higher odds of Fasciola spp. infection. These findings suggested bovine fascioliasis is a serious veterinary disease in Kelantan. Thus, appropriate control, prevention and monitoring strategies of this parasitic infection are urgently needed to reduce the burden of the disease.
Amoebic liver abscess (ALA) is the most frequent clinical presentation of extra-intestinal amoebiasis. The diagnosis of ALA is typically based on the developing clinical symptoms, characteristic changes on radiological imaging and serology. Numerous serological tests have been introduced for the diagnosis of ALA, either detecting circulating amoebic antigens or antibodies. However those tests show some pitfalls in their efficacy and/or the preparation of the tests are costly and tedious. The commercial IHA kit that used crude antigen was reported to be useful in diagnosis of ALA, however high antibody background in endemic areas may cause problems in its interpretation. Thus, discovery of well-defined antigen(s) is urgently needed to improve the weaknesses of current serodiagnostic tests.
To compare the efficacy of three different tissue stains, namely haematoxylin and eosin (H&E), periodic-acid Schiff (PAS) and immunohistochemical (IHC) stains for detection of Entamoeba histolytica (E. histolytica) trophozoites in abscessed liver tissues of hamster.