EVALUATION OF BLASTOCYSTIS SPP. AMONG INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASE PATIENTS WITH DIFFERENT DIAGNOSTIC METHODS AND SUBTYPE ANALYSES

Objective: blastocystis spp; is a protozoon that can be seen worldwide. fecal-oral transmission is the most accepted pathway for blastocystis spp. infection. most infected patients show no symptoms of infection, however it can cause abdominal pain, acute or chronic diarrhea, vomiting, flatulence and nausea. it is suggested that blastocystis spp. may cause several pathologies in gut causing an inflammatory response that may lead to inflammatory bowel diseases. materials and methods: our study included 60 ibh patients diagnosed as ulcerative colitis (30) and crohn’s disease (30) in division of gastroenterology and 40 healty controls with no gastrointestinal disease. stool samples of all patients were examined for presence of any parasites. presenceof blastocystis spp. was evaluated with microscopy, culture with two different media, elisa and pcr methods. for subtype analyses sequencing was performed. results: blastocystis spp. was detected in 6 (10%) ibd patients, 2 (5%) in controls. blastocystis spp. antigen detected in 12 (20%) ibd patients and 3 (7.5%) in controls. blastocystis spp. dna was detected in 8 (13.3%) ibd patients and 6 (15%) controls. no statistical significance was detected between ibd patients and control group in terms of blastocystis spp positivity. st3 was the predominant subtype and abdominal pain was the most common clinical symptom. conclusion: these results suggested that using two different media increases the sensitivity. pcr was the most sensitive method. elisa results showed high sensitivity and specificity, suggested that elisa method could be an alternative to the microscopy and culture. no significant relationship between ibd and blastocystis spp. was determined. also, no significance was detected between subtypes and clinical symptoms. although we could not determine a relationship between subtypes and ibd or clinical symptoms, further investigations are needed to clarify this issue.