Book Description
With increased sensitivity, a less invasive sampling procedure would be required from the patient. Also, the earlier the presence of parasites in the tissues is detected, the earlier the diagnosis would occur. Tissues that contain very few parasites and had been classified as previously unusable for diagnosis or tissues from older medical cases can be analyzed for the presence of disease and the identification of causative species. The successful application of the singleplex PCR technique to Plasmodium falciparum and Leishmania degraded DNA samples leads to the feasibility of success for the multiplex PCR techniques involving degraded DNA analyses. Therefore, this methodology may be applied to samples of unknown disease content to either include or exclude the agents of disease. Future directions may extend these analyses to include a range of other agents of disease, thus allowing for the determination of disease antiquity through degraded DNA analyses."--Proquest theses abstract.