Comparative Assessment of In-House Real-Time PCRs Targeting Enteric Disease-Associated Microsporidia in Human Stool Samples

Department of Tropical Medicine, Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine & I. Department of Medicine, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 20251 Hamburg, Germany

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Institute for Transfusion Medicine, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 20251 Hamburg, Germany

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Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine Hamburg, 20359 Hamburg, Germany

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National Reference Centre for Tropical Pathogens, 20359 Hamburg, Germany

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TIB MolBiol, 12103 Berlin, Germany

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Medical Mission Institute, 97074 Würzburg, Germany

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Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Infectious Diseases, University Medical Center Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany

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Department of Medicine, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

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Institute of Virology, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital of Cologne, University of Cologne, 50935 Cologne, Germany

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Department of Hospital Hygiene & Infectious Diseases, University Medicine Göttingen, 37075 Göttingen, Germany

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^†

Hagen Frickmann and Ulrike Loderstädt contributed equally to this work.

Academic Editor: Collette Bromhead

Pathogens 2021, 10(6), 656; https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens10060656

Received: 1 May 2021 / Revised: 24 May 2021 / Accepted: 25 May 2021 / Published: 26 May 2021 / Corrected: 17 February 2022

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Molecular Diagnostics for Infectious Diseases)

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Abstract

Microsporidiosis is an infection predominantly occurring in immunosuppressed patients and infrequently also in travelers. This study was performed to comparatively evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of real-time PCR assays targeting microsporidia with etiological relevance in the stool of human patients in a latent class analysis-based test comparison without a reference standard with perfect accuracy. Thereby, two one-tube real-time PCR assays and two two-tube real-time PCR assays targeting Enterocytozoon bieneusi and Encephalocytozoon spp. were included in the assessment with reference stool material (20), stool samples from Ghanaian HIV-positive patients (903), and from travelers, migrants and Colombian indigenous people (416). Sensitivity of the assays ranged from 60.4% to 97.4% and specificity from 99.1% to 100% with substantial agreement according to Cohen’s kappa of 79.6%. Microsporidia DNA was detected in the reference material and the stool of the HIV patients but not in the stool of the travelers, migrants, and the Colombian indigenous people. Accuracy-adjusted prevalence was 5.8% (n = 78) for the study population as a whole. In conclusion, reliable detection of enteric disease-associated microsporidia in stool samples by real-time PCR could be demonstrated, but sensitivity between the compared microsporidia-specific real-time PCR assays varied. View Full-Text

Keywords: microsporidiosis; real-time PCR; test comparison; Enterocytozoon bieneusi; Encephalocytozoon spp.; stool; latent class analysis

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MDPI and ACS Style

Tanida, K.; Hahn, A.; Eberhardt, K.A.; Tannich, E.; Landt, O.; Kann, S.; Feldt, T.; Sarfo, F.S.; Di Cristanziano, V.; Frickmann, H.; Loderstädt, U. Comparative Assessment of In-House Real-Time PCRs Targeting Enteric Disease-Associated Microsporidia in Human Stool Samples. Pathogens 2021, 10, 656. https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens10060656

AMA Style

Tanida K, Hahn A, Eberhardt KA, Tannich E, Landt O, Kann S, Feldt T, Sarfo FS, Di Cristanziano V, Frickmann H, Loderstädt U. Comparative Assessment of In-House Real-Time PCRs Targeting Enteric Disease-Associated Microsporidia in Human Stool Samples. Pathogens. 2021; 10(6):656. https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens10060656

Chicago/Turabian Style

Tanida, Konstantin, Andreas Hahn, Kirsten A. Eberhardt, Egbert Tannich, Olfert Landt, Simone Kann, Torsten Feldt, Fred S. Sarfo, Veronica Di Cristanziano, Hagen Frickmann, and Ulrike Loderstädt. 2021. "Comparative Assessment of In-House Real-Time PCRs Targeting Enteric Disease-Associated Microsporidia in Human Stool Samples" Pathogens 10, no. 6: 656. https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens10060656

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Comparative Assessment of In-House Real-Time PCRs Targeting Enteric Disease-Associated Microsporidia in Human Stool Samples

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