New publication Parasitology section

The Parasitology section has a new publication: “An International External Quality Assessment Scheme to Assess the Diagnostic Performance of Polymerase Chain Reaction Detection of Acanthamoeba Keratitis”.

In 2022 the SKML section parasitology had developed the first an external quality assessment scheme for detection by DNA amplification methods of the protozoan parasite Acanthamoeba spp., which can cause serious eye infections (keratitis).Since the SKML distributes specimens with real parasites as well as purified DNA, efficiency of the entire procedure, as well as the DNA amplification step, could be evaluated. The results indicate that a pretreatment procedure can be a risky step in PCR-baseddetections of Acanthamoeba, but it improves the sensitivity and reliability, especially of samples containing cysts. Therefore, participation in an EQAS is informative for routine diagnostic laboratories and can assist in improving the laboratory proceduresused for the diagnosis of Acanthamoeba keratitis.

The full publicaton can be found here