Biomaterial Database

The laboratory diagnosis of enteric fever. 2008

John Wain, and Salih Hosoglu

Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, United Kingdom.

The diagnosis of enteric fever currently depends upon the isolation of Salmonella from a patient, most commonly by blood culture. This facility is not available in many areas where the disease is endemic. Serodiagnosis depends upon the 100-year-old Widal test, and other serological diagnostic tools have limitations because of their low sensitivity and/or specificity. The most promising recently published results are from PCR-based amplification of DNA from the blood of enteric fever patients but again this technique is not available where it is most needed. Antigen detection has not been investigated for well over three decades and detecting an immune response specific for typhoid fever has been done only with antibody detection. There is an urgent need for the rational design and evaluation of effective and appropriate diagnostics for enteric fever which must include the emerging threat of S. Paratyphi A.

UI	MeSH Term	Description	Entries
D004269	DNA, Bacterial	Deoxyribonucleic acid that makes up the genetic material of bacteria.	Bacterial DNA
D006801	Humans	Members of the species Homo sapiens.	Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D000942	Antigens, Bacterial	Substances elaborated by bacteria that have antigenic activity.	Bacterial Antigen,Bacterial Antigens,Antigen, Bacterial
D012680	Sensitivity and Specificity	Binary classification measures to assess test results. Sensitivity or recall rate is the proportion of true positives. Specificity is the probability of correctly determining the absence of a condition. (From Last, Dictionary of Epidemiology, 2d ed)	Specificity,Sensitivity,Specificity and Sensitivity
D014435	Typhoid Fever	An acute systemic febrile infection caused by SALMONELLA TYPHI, a serotype of SALMONELLA ENTERICA.	Enteric Fever,Typhus, Abdominal,Salmonella typhi Infection,Typhoid,Abdominal Typhus,Enteric Fevers,Fever, Enteric,Fever, Typhoid,Fevers, Enteric,Fevers, Typhoid,Infection, Salmonella typhi,Infections, Salmonella typhi,Salmonella typhi Infections,Typhoid Fevers,Typhoids
D016133	Polymerase Chain Reaction	In vitro method for producing large amounts of specific DNA or RNA fragments of defined length and sequence from small amounts of short oligonucleotide flanking sequences (primers). The essential steps include thermal denaturation of the double-stranded target molecules, annealing of the primers to their complementary sequences, and extension of the annealed primers by enzymatic synthesis with DNA polymerase. The reaction is efficient, specific, and extremely sensitive. Uses for the reaction include disease diagnosis, detection of difficult-to-isolate pathogens, mutation analysis, genetic testing, DNA sequencing, and analyzing evolutionary relationships.	Anchored PCR,Inverse PCR,Nested PCR,PCR,Anchored Polymerase Chain Reaction,Inverse Polymerase Chain Reaction,Nested Polymerase Chain Reaction,PCR, Anchored,PCR, Inverse,PCR, Nested,Polymerase Chain Reactions,Reaction, Polymerase Chain,Reactions, Polymerase Chain
D019411	Clinical Laboratory Techniques	Techniques used to carry out clinical investigative procedures in the diagnosis and therapy of disease.	Clinical Laboratory Test,Clinical Laboratory Testing,Clinical Laboratory Diagnoses,Clinical Laboratory Testings,Clinical Laboratory Tests,Diagnoses and Laboratory Examinations,Diagnosis, Laboratory,Laboratory Diagnosis,Laboratory Examinations and Diagnoses,Laboratory Techniques, Clinical,Clinical Laboratory Technique,Diagnose, Clinical Laboratory,Laboratory Diagnoses,Laboratory Technique, Clinical,Laboratory Test, Clinical,Laboratory Testing, Clinical,Technique, Clinical Laboratory,Test, Clinical Laboratory,Testing, Clinical Laboratory
D019779	Salmonella enterica	A subgenus of Salmonella containing several medically important serotypes. The habitat for the majority of strains is warm-blooded animals.