Acanthamoeba keratitis (AK) is a corneal disease caused by members of a genus of free-living amoebae and is associated predominantly with contact lens (CL) use. This study reports 16 cases of culture-proven AK diagnosed in northern Italy. Genotype identification was carried out with a PCR assay based on sequence analysis of the 18S rRNA gene, and sensitivity and specificity were evaluated in co...

Free-living amoebae are amphizoic organisms living in soil, air, fresh and sea water. Species belonging to the genera Acanthamoeba, Naegleria and Balamuthia are human parasites, which may invade the central nervous system, lungs, adrenal glands, skin, eyes and lower jaw. In this paper, we examine the occurrence of potentially virulent strains of amoebae in water bodies of the West Pomeranian an...

The occurrence of waterborne parasites coupled with water parameters at various processing sites of two drinking water treatment plants (A and B) and seven distribution system (DS) sites in Sarawak, Malaysia were studied. Ten liters of water underwent immunomagnetic separation (IMS) technique to detect the presence of Giardia and Cryptosporidium (oo)cysts. The remaining supernatant was used to ...

BACKGROUND Free-living amoeba (FLA)-related keratitis is a progressive infection of the cornea with poor prognosis. The present study aimed to investigates the contact lenses of patients with keratitis for pathogenic free-living amoebae. METHODS Overall, 62 contact lenses and their paraphernalia of patients with keratitis cultured and tested for the presence of free-living amoebae using morph...

Diagnosis of Acanthamoeba by microscopic examination, culture, and polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) has several limitations (sensitivity, specificity, lack of detection of several strains, cost of testing for discrimination among strains). We developed a new high-resolution melting real-time PCR (HRM) to detect and characterize Acanthamoeba infections. HRM performances were evaluated with stra...

Amphizoic amoebae generate a serious human health threat due to their pathogenic potential as facultative parasites, causative agents of vision-threatening Acanthamoeba keratitis (AK). Recently, AK incidences have been reported with increasing frequency worldwide, particularly in contact lens wearers. In our study, severe cases of AK in Poland and respective pathogenic isolates were assessed at...

purpose: to determine the prevalence and genotype of acanthamoeba keratitis (ak) in patients referred to farabi referral eye center methods: in this study, corneal scraping specimens that obtained from keratitis patients examined for acanthamoeba and its genotype identifications. direct smears, cultivation in non-nutrient agar (nna) followed by pcr were chosen as the basic diagnostic methods. t...