Dr. Faruk Sarkinfada, KIC Health and Medical Sciences Department, held an online lecture on Laboratory Diagnosis of Typhoid Fever: A Misnomer in Resource Constraint Settings, organized by Medical Laboratory Science Education Foundation of Nigeria.
Read More: Presentation Highlights
Typhoid fever is a life-threatening infection caused by the bacterium Salmonella typhi usually spread through contaminated food or water.
The disease has relatively higher morbidity and mortality in resource constraint settings of Africa, the Americas, South-East Asia, and the Western Pacific regions than in industrialized countries with improved living conditions and the introduction of antibiotics.
Definitive laboratory diagnosis of typhoid fever involves the isolation of Salmonella typhi from blood /bone marrow, feces, urine, or bile aspirates. More advanced diagnostic techniques involve the point-of-care rapid diagnostic tests, Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent assay, and molecular diagnostic techniques. In resource constraint settings, the risks of typhoid fever are often met with limited capacity for accurate diagnosis and resemblance of typhoid fever to other febrile bacterial and viral illnesses.
The true incidence of typhoid fever would therefore be difficult to evaluate in these settings with attendant impact of morbidity and mortality due to typhoid fever. There is therefore the need for continuous search for the development of highly specific and quality assured diagnostic techniques based on the detection of specific antigens of Salmonella typhi from clinical samples.
It is part of the research interest of the health and medical science department of KIC to evaluate the diagnostic value of lipopolysaccharides (LPS) of Salmonella typhi for the diagnosis of typhoid fever and other blood-born bacterial infections.