Perspective of Clinical Parasitology from the view of PCR examination

Abstract

Although parasitic diseases are uncommon in Japan, they can have fatal outcomes, necessitating accurate diagnoses in clinical practice. In contrast, owing to the rarity of these parasitic infections, some cases have difficulty in making an accurate diagnosis of parasite-suspected cases without any equipment or knowledge for parasite-specific examination. In this review, we present cases of parasitic diseases that were referred to our laboratory (Department of Global Infectious Diseases, Kanazawa University), with a particular focus on cases caused by intestinal parasites, such as Entamoeba histolytica and Anisakidae (Anisakis family) nematodes.