Evaluation of Nuclepore Membrane Filtration Technique for Diagnosis of Schistosoma haematobium Infection

Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease. It is one of the most important diseases of humans in tropical and subtropical parts of the world, rapid characterization of schistosome eggs considered as a key step for clinical management, diagnosis of Schistosoma haematobium is generally based on the detection of eggs in a  single urine specimen,  Urine filteration is one of the methods recommended by the WHO for the detection of  S.haematobium. In 1976, Peters et al adapted a nucleopore filter for the diagnosis of S.haematobium eggs. They used filter 13 mm in diameter with 8 µm pores, In another study done by Peters et al (1976), they proved that under field conditions, filteration of two 5 ml aliquots using 8 µm pore filters was very  practical , if eggs of S.haematobium are present (size 150 by 60 µm), they are unable to pass through the filter and can be observed and counted under a microscope fitted with a 10x objective.
This study used both the microscopic examination techniques of urine, centrifugation sedimentation technique and Nuclepore membrane filteration technique to detect Schistosoma haematobium eggs in urine for 1000 patient samples, to evaluate each technique alone and the two techniques together. This study showed that nuclepore filteration method more valid than the sedimentation centrifugation method, nuclepore filteration detect 77 infected cases with a sensitivity of  97.5%, but sedimentation detect 64 infected cases with a sensitivity of  81%, in this study we considered the sum of nuclepore and sedimentation as a gold standard, they detected 79 infected cases to compare them with other methods.