Molecular Detection of Toxoplasma gondii: Accuracy, Prevalence, and Standardization of Diagnostic Protocols
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48165/ijapm.2025.41.2.4Keywords:
Toxoplasmosis, zoonotic, infection, worldwideAbstract
Toxoplasmosis, is a common and zoonotic infection worldwide, which is a major cause of concern in the field of public health since it is caused by a protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Early and proper diagnosis is essential to the management of toxoplasmosis especially among the immunocompromised patients as well as the expectant women. Laboratory detection methods and particularly polymerase chain reaction and its variant methods have transformed the field of diagnosis due their very high sensitivity and specificity over conventional serological tests. The meta analysis is a systematic extraction and synthesis of data of recent studies of the current research evaluating the technique of molecular diagnostics of T. gondii in humans and animals. Peer-reviewed articles that were published between 2015 and 2025 in any journal have been reviewed with the purpose of evaluating molecular detection methodological differences, diagnostic accuracy, and prevalence rates. Findings have shown that multicopy nucleotide target gene amplification PCR-based assays including B1 and 18S rDNA show increased sensitivity and specificity and pooled prevalence rates distribute by host species and geographic origin. Loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) and real-time PCR (qPCR) have been shown to be promising rapid and quantitative. The paper has demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of molecular methods concluding on the importance of standardized protocols and hospitalized methods of diagnostics to get optimum results of toxoplasmosis diagnosis and control.
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