Waldenström J, Bensch S, Hasselquist D, Ostman O
Department of Animal Ecology, Ecology Building, Lund University, SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden.
J Parasitol. 2004 Feb;90(1):191-4. doi: 10.1645/GE-3221RN.
Recently, several polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods for detection and genetic identification of haemosporidian parasites in avian blood have been developed. Most of these have considerably higher sensitivity compared with traditional microscope-based examinations of blood smears. These new methods have already had a strong impact on several aspects of research on avian blood parasites. In this study, we present a new nested PCR approach, building on a previously published PCR method, which has significantly improved performance. We compare the new method with some existing assays and show, by sequence-based data, that the higher detection rate is mainly due to superior detection of Plasmodium spp. infections, which often are of low intensity and, therefore, hard to detect with other methods.
最近，已经开发出了几种基于聚合酶链反应（PCR）的方法，用于检测鸟类血液中的血孢子虫寄生虫并进行基因鉴定。与传统的基于显微镜检查血涂片的方法相比，其中大多数方法具有更高的灵敏度。这些新方法已经对鸟类血液寄生虫研究的多个方面产生了重大影响。在本研究中，我们在先前发表的PCR方法基础上提出了一种新的巢式PCR方法，其性能有了显著提高。我们将新方法与一些现有检测方法进行了比较，并通过基于序列的数据表明，较高的检测率主要是由于对疟原虫属感染的检测能力更强，而疟原虫属感染通常强度较低，因此用其他方法很难检测到。
