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Category Archives: egg count

Quantitative Egg Count

Did another McMaster egg count; 800 epg.  So, still down from a month ago and the few months before.  Symptoms are pretty miserable – I added VSL#3 (high potency probiotics) in yesterday and that helped – a more solid stool this morning, but I just had diarrhea again.  I cut back on the vitamin/mineral supplements [...]

Quantitative Egg Counts and Hookworm Burden

I’ve been doing McMaster egg counts since I got reinfected with hookworms, and I’m always curious how many worms I have.
(image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/prep4md/2772121447/)
The Nottingham dose-ranging trial has a list of quantitative egg counts per dose.  According to that chart, 10 and 25 larvae resulted in an average of 100-300 epg.  50 had a higher egg [...]

Did Another McMaster Egg Count: 6 months in

So I did another egg count just now, my second since a few months ago.  I followed these instructions:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/599020/Macmaster-counting-Technique-ppt
except rather than making a large volume of flotation fluid, I mixed 40 g of salt with 100 ml. of water.  I wrote about the technique and where I got my supplies here.

Did My First McMaster Egg Count!

Eureka! I finally managed to see some hookworm larvae under the microscope. For a full visual description of the McMaster egg count, see: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/599020/Macmaster-counting-Technique-ppt
Results from 10 larvae? 800 epg
I’ll walk through my steps one by one. First, I bought the materials:
digital scale: myweigh ibalance 500 (more expensive then [...]

incubation techniques for hookworm larvae

I’m researching incubation methods, and hopefully in a few weeks I will embark on my first McMaster egg count. There seem to be 3 choices for incubating the hookworm larvae; the Baermann, Harada-Mori, and the AP method (agar plate.) Here’s a nice visual and thorough list of requirements for the first two methods:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8AWz0cS6e9kC&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq#PPA115,M1
This [...]