Reduced centrifugation duration improves diagnostic performance of an equine tapeworm egg counting technique

Anoplocephala perfoliata, can cause severe health problems in horses. Standard coprological tests have performed poorly for detecting A. perfoliata, and while a centrifugation-enhanced flotation technique is superior to other techniques, it is time consuming due to three 10-minute centrifugation steps. This study aimed to evaluate modifications of this technique that reduce the centrifugation durations to 5 and 1 min, respectively. Fecal samples were collected from ten adult A. perfoliata egg count positive mares and divided into 9 subsamples to allow for three replicate counts for each of the three protocols. The standard 10-minute centrifugation had a mean coefficient of variation (CV) of 76.8% and a 95% confidence interval of 61.4% - 92.1%, while the 5-min and 1-min protocols had CVs of 68.6% (53.7%-83.4%) and 59.0% (48.7% - 69.4%), respectively. Furthermore, the 10-min protocol yielded 70.7% positive counts compared to 82.9% and 86.2% for the 5-min and 1-min protocols, respectively. The 5-min and 1-min protocols were also superior in egg count magnitude, with significantly higher medians compared to the 10-min protocol. Overall, these data demonstrate that reducing the centrifugation time to one minute will improve test performance for detecting and quantifying equine tapeworm eggs in fecal samples.