Moving to nucleic acid-based detection of genital Chlamydia trachomatis

Prevalence ofChlamydia TrachomatisInfections in Symptomatic Patients in Bulgaria

The aim of the study was to investigate the prevalence of C. trachomatis infection in symptomatic patients and to compare our data with similar studies made in Bulgaria. 822 patients were included in the study with a diagnosis suggestive of Chlamydial infection: urethritis, prostatitis, Reiter syndrome, cervicitis, salpingitis, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, infertility, etc. The samples were cell cultured on McCoy and detected by immunofluorescence with anti-lipopolysaccharide monoclonal antibody. The prevalence of C. trachomatis infection in symptomatic patients was about 37% in the investigated 822 urogenital samples (568 women and 254 men). Active infection with C. trachomatis was detected in 39% of the women and in 33% of the men. Our study shows a relatively high prevalence of C. trachomatis infection in symptomatic patients; a lower prevalence of the infection in comparison with other Bulgarian studies, using different methods for detection. The results prove the high sensitivity and specificity of the cell-culture method for the detection of Chlamydial infections and the need for screening of the symptomatic patients and their sexual partners for Chlamydial infection.

Strand displacement amplification: a versatile tool for molecular diagnostics

Strand displacement amplification is an isothermal process that permits 10(10)-fold amplification of a DNA target sequence in as little as 15 min. In the form of the BD ProbeTec ET System, strand displacement amplification was the first nucleic acid amplification technology to be coupled with real-time homogeneous fluorescence-based detection for routine application in the clinical laboratory. The isothermal nature of the reaction process offers distinct advantages with regard to the cost and simplicity of instrumentation, while a universal detection format permits the use of the same fluorescent detector probes across multiple analytes. This has important potential in the field of genetic analysis, in which disease predisposition and therapeutic efficacy are frequently determined by multiple nucleic acid markers.