Intestinal parasitic infections among pre-school children in Sangkhlaburi, Thailand.

This study was conducted to investigate the presence of intestinal parasites among pre-school children (aged 3 months to 5 years) in Sangkhlaburi, a rural district in the west of Thailand along the Thai-Myanmar border. Stool specimens were collected from October 2001 through October 2002. A total of 472 pre-school children, 233 males and 239 females, 236 children with diarrhea and 236 asymptomatic children were recruited for the study. Each specimen was processed and examined by direct wet smear, modified acid fast stain, formalin-ethylacetate sedimentation concentration technique, and trichrome stain. In detecting Giardia lamblia and Cryptosporidium species ProSpecT Microplate assays (Alexon-Trend, Lenexa, KS) were performed. There were 107 individuals (22.7%), 41 diarrheal and 66 asymptomatic children, infected with intestinal parasites. The most frequent parasites identified in cases and controls were G. lamblia and Cryptosporidium spp. Eighteen specimens (3.8%) showed mixed parasite infections. Highest proportion of intestinal parasites occurred during the rainy season (June-October).

Large-scale screening of nasal swabs for Bacillus anthracis: descriptive summary and discussion of the National Institutes of Health's experience.

In October 2001, a letter containing a large number of anthrax spores was sent through the Brentwood post office in Washington, D.C., to a United States Senate office on Capitol Hill, resulting in contamination in both places. Several thousand people who worked at these sites were screened for spore exposure by collecting nasal swab samples. We describe here a screening protocol which we, as a level A laboratory, used on very short notice to process a large number of specimens (3,936 swabs) in order to report preliminary results as quickly as possible. Six isolates from our screening met preliminary criteria for Bacillus anthracis identification and were referred for definitive testing. Although none of the isolates was later confirmed to be B. anthracis, we studied these isolates further to define their biochemical characteristics and 16S rRNA sequences. Four of the six isolates were identified as Bacillus megaterium, one was identified as Bacillus cereus, and one was an unidentifiable Bacillus sp. Our results suggest that large-scale nasal-swab screening for potential exposure to anthrax spores, particularly if not done immediately postexposure, may not be very effective for detecting B. anthracis but may detect a number of Bacillus spp. that are phenotypically very similar to B. anthracis.