Journal of Bacteriology & Parasitology

Sagel U

Publications

• Research Article
  Screening of Maternal Toxoplasmosis in Pregnancy: Laboratory Diagnostics from the Perspective of Public Health Requirements
  Author(s): Sagel U and Krämer ASagel U and Krämer A
  
  Serological screening for maternal Toxoplasma infections in pregnancy has been questioned recently. We analyze some diagnostic difficulties for routine laboratories, poor public health guidance of existing screening programs, and their mutual worsening impact on the efficacy of the programs and on toxoplasmosis research. False positive screening tests may be more likely than true maternal Toxoplasma infections and diagnosis often depends on confirmatory testing in experienced reference laboratories. Apart from clear seroconversions, any marker to assign the time point of infection to the ongoing pregnancy (IgM, IgG avidity, etc.) suffers from important limitations. With poor screening compliance, many screening alerts come from first serum samples in pregnancy that are cumbersome to test, while seroconversions are seldom observed due to missing follow-up samples in late pregnan.. View More»
  DOI: 10.4172/2155-9597.S5-003

  Abstract PDF