Toxoplasma gondii: Sensitive and rapid detection of infection by loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method

Exp Parasitol. 2009 Jan 31. [Epub ahead of print]

Toxoplasma gondii: Sensitive and rapid detection of infection by loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method

Zhang H, M Thekisoe OM, Aboge GO, Kyan H, Yamagishi J, Inoue N, Nishikawa Y, Zakimi S, Xuan X.

National Research Center for Protozoan Diseases, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Inada-cho, Obihiro, Hokkaido 080-8555, Japan.

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method amplifies DNA with high specificity, sensitivity and rapidity. In this study, we used a conserved sequence in the 200 to 300 fold repetitive 529 bp gene of Toxoplasma gondii to design primers for LAMP test. Detection limit of T. gondii LAMP assay with the primers is 1 pg/muL of T. gondii DNA, which was evaluated using ten-fold serially diluted DNA of cultured parasites. Furthermore, LAMP and conventional PCR methods were applied for amplification of the T. gondii DNA extracted from the lymph nodes taken from pigs which were suspected to be Toxoplasma infection. As a result, 76.9% (70/91) and 85.7% (78/91) of the samples were positive on PCR and LAMP analyses, respectively. Therefore, the LAMP has a potential to be applied as an alternative molecular diagnostic tool for detection of T. gondii infection from veterinary samples. This is the first study, which applies the LAMP method to diagnose Toxoplasma from veterinary samples.

PMID: 19545521 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]