Comparative Evaluation of Parasitological, Serological and DNA Amplification Methods for Diagnosis of Natural Trypanosomal Infection in Equines (Report‪)‬

Byline: Asim Aslam, Zafar Iqbal Chaudhary, Habib ur Rehman, Kamran Ashraf, Nasir Ahmad, Tahir Yaqub, Azhar Maqbool and Abdul Rauf Shakoori - Email:habibrehman@uvas.edu.pk Abstract.- The study was conducted to evaluate and compare the parasitological (micro -haematocrit method, MHCT), serological (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, ELISA) and molecular (polymerase chain reaction, PCR) methods for diagnosis of trypanosomal infection in equines. Blood samples, taken from 500 animals (horses and donkeys), were primarily screened with formol gel test. Of 500 samples examined, 120 samples were found positive with formol gel test. Later, these samples were further processed for the parasitaemia with MHCT, detection of antibody against trypanosmal antigens positive ELISA and trypanosomal DNA using PCR.