giardia is one of the most common human parasites and causes a lengthly course of nonbacterial diarrhea. disease outbreaks due to giardia infection are often attributed to contaminated water supplies. a major problem associated with detection for this organism is the lack of sensitive and reliable methods. pcr has the potential to address many of the limitations.we have performed a pcr-based me...

BACKGROUND Clinical and epidemiological studies have suggested the development of acquired immunity in individuals previously infected with Giardia lamblia. However, there are no data on the long-term cellular immunity and genotype cross-reactivity. An outbreak of assemblage B giardiasis in a nonendemic area made it possible to evaluate the long-term cellular mediated immunity and its specifici...

Giardia intestinalis is a protozoan parasite which infects the gastrointestinal tract of man and animals. It is endemic throughout the world and is transmitted via faecal contamination of drinking water and food. Giardia intestinalis has a relatively simple life cycle alternating between the trophozoite (proliferative form) and the cyst (resting form). The nature of symptoms associated with Gia...

In the present study, an attempt has been made to assess the probiotic characteristics of lactobacilli and yeast strains isolated from whey beverage under conditions simulating the in vivo stresses encountered in the gastrointestinal tract i.e. acid, alkaline, proteolytic enzymes and bile stress. The therapeutic potential of probiotics Lactobacillus casei or Lactobacillus yoghurt was assessed i...

Feces from 62 beavers (Castor canadensis) in Massachusetts were examined by fluorescence microscopy (IFA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for Microsporidia species, Cryptosporidium spp., and Giardia spp. between January 2002 and December 2004. PCR-positive specimens were further examined by gene sequencing. Protist parasites were detected in 6.4% of the beavers. All were subadults and kits....

Giardia duodenalis isolates recovered from humans and dogs living in the same locality in a remote tea-growing community of northeast India were characterized at 3 different loci; the SSU-rDNA, elongation factor 1-alpha (ef1-alpha) and triose phosphate isomerase (tpi) gene. Phylogenetic analysis of the SSU-rDNA and efl-alpha genes provided poor genetic resolution of the isolates within various ...

Giardia lamblia is the most common intestinal parasite in the United States and is worldwide in distribution. l Approximately 4 percent of stool specimens submitted to public health laboratories in this country contain Giardia cysts.2 The usual symptoms of acute giardiasis include diarrhea, abdominal cramps, nausea, and weight loss. Many, if not most, individuals with Giardia infection are asym...

Malnutrition reduces the host immunity and enhances the host susceptibility to various diseases. The present study describes the effect of oral administration of probiotic Lactobacillus casei to malnourished-Giardia-infected BALB/c mice with respect to surface alterations and brush border membrane enzyme activity of the small intestine. It was observed that probiotic feeding either prior to or ...

To identify the animal sources for Cryptosporidium and Giardia contamination, we genotyped Cryptosporidium and Giardia spp. in wildlife from Sydney's water catchments using sequence analysis at the 18S rRNA locus for Cryptosporidium and 18S rRNA and glutamate dehydrogenase (gdh) for Giardia. A total of 564 faecal samples from 16 different host species were analysed. Cryptosporidium was identifi...

A combination cassette format nonenzymatic rapid immunoassay for detection of Giardia and Cryptosporidium antigens was evaluated by using 556 patient stool specimens from three clinical laboratories. This assay (Genzyme Diagnostics Contrast Giardia/Cryptosporidium), which can be used with fresh or formalin-fixed specimens, had unadjusted sensitivities and specificities of 96.1 and 98.5% for Gia...