Evaluation of parasitological and serological techniques in diagnosis of amoebiasis

Parasitological investigations carried out on 324 subjects of symptomatic and asymptomatic amoebiasis showed that formol-ether concentration was a superior technique than examination of 3 consecutive stool specimens by direct microscopy in cases of colitis, hepatitis and cyst passers. Culture of pus yielded better results than the other techniques for examination of stool in cases of liver abscess. Indirect haemagglutination test carried out with 238 sera from cases confirmed to be either positive or negative for Entamoeba histolytica revealed good correlation of its results with parasitological investigations in cases of dysentery and hepatitis. This test proved to be much superior to parasitological investigations in diagnosis of liver abscess. A close correlation between the results of gel-diffusion and I.H.A. was observed in dysentery and liver abscess groups, although I.H.A. was more sensitive. Precipitin band appeared in gel-diffusion test only when the I.H.A. titre was 1: 486 and the number of bands increased with rise in the titre.