| Schistosomiasis is a serious zoonosis that frequently leads to physical, social and economic disability. Diagnosis is of vital importance in disease control. In general, there are two different approaches to the diagnosis of schistosomiasis: direct and indirect methods. The Kato-Katz thick smear stool examination is a traditional diagnostic method to assessing S.japonicum infection which has been widely used in the disease control program. However, it brings much more workload and poor compliance in field surveys and has limitations because of the poor sensitivity especially in low endemic regions. So, serological methods attain people's interest and have been applied in the field. Although immunological diagnosis does not offer an alternative to parasitological diagnosis, especially in clinical situation, the specific antibody may someway reflect the characteristics of epidemic for the endemic area population. Our study is trying to construct a dual-peak model to define the schistosome infection at the population level.This project mainly follow the flows listed below: firstly, take a census of the local population; secondly, collect stool specimens on two occasions, separated by 7 days and examine the stools using Kato-Katz thick smear method; thirdly, collect blood sample on one occasion at the meantime, and test the antibody level of the serum. All the information collected above is to finally help construct the dual-peak mathematical model of the antibody level.Thus, the three main parts of our study are as follows:1. Sample Collection in Multi-centre Field StudyCensus of local population is taken in four endemic regions withdifferent prevalence. Quality control is essential in such multi-centrestudy, so every step follows the pre-written protocol, and field workers... |
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