So I’ve had a very eventful week calling labs across California to see if they’d do a quantitative egg count for me. The answer from all? No.
“Why do you want to do an egg count?”
“I’m trying to determine my aproximate worm burden for an experimental
hookworm infection.”
“How do you do an egg count anyway?”
“I was hoping you knew. From what I’ve read online, one measures eggs
per gram of feces, using a grid slide.”
“But I take a small amount of that stool and look under a microscope.
We can tell you light infection, heavy infection, but cannot count.”
Or will not?
And so on.
My favorite was calling UCDavis and being transferred first to the
rodent division, who were very nice, but said I needed the large
animal division. At this point I was becoming desperate and asked if
I could just be a large animal, though I think the dog vets would be
more familiar with hookworm egg counts. No one would help me.
Finally, I found this:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/599020/Macmaster-counting-Technique-pp
http://cal.vet.upenn.edu/projects/parasit06/website/lab1.htm#techniques
Nottingham’s dose-ranging study used the Macmaster counting technique. It seems rather simple. You mix a small amount of measured feces with salt water and a tongue dispenser, then pass it through a sieve. Then suck up a measured quantitity, and put it on a grid slide. Then, going slowly up and down the grid, you count the visible eggs, and multiply it by the correct number to get your eggs per gram of feces. If we all learned to do this accurately, we could monitor our egg output post infection, and watch it through the months/years to track a decline in adult hookworm population.
What I’d like to know is how one cleans the lab equipment without the lab. Somehow I’m not that thrilled. I’d rather bake a cake.
Post a Comment