A survey on eperythrozoon infection in the population from Hangzhou city, Zhejiang province

Abstract

To understand the situation of eperythrozoon (EPE) infection in the population from Hangzhou. According to the situation in Hangzhou, a questionnaire was designed to investigate the study population. Venous blood specimens from the studied objects were collected before an Improved Wright-Giemsa Fast Dyeing method was used. Microscopic examination was applied to test their condition of infection. SPSS 13.0 software was applied for statistical analysis. Totally, 580 persons were under investigation in this study, including 111 with jobs ('occupational') and another 118 served as internal controls of them. The rest 351 were considered as external controls. Finally, 54 people were detected as having EPE infection with a total positive rate as 9.31%. The infection rates were 20.72% (23/111), 7.12% (25/351) and 5.08% (6/118) among the 'occupational' population, external controls and the internal controls, respectively. The difference among these three rates was statistically significant (χ² = 21.60, P < 0.05). There was also significant difference found in the infection rate between people who washed their hands promptly after being exposed to animal coat, raw meat or animal excrements and those who did not wash their hands in time. The infection rate of the population who washed hands with soap or other cleaning products was lower than that of those who washed hands with only water (χ² = 6.76, P < 0.05). We found that residential area, pet feeding, exposure to animal coat/raw meat/animal excrement, trauma were not risk factors of EPE infection. People with higher education degree had lower risk to EPE infection than those with low education. The infection rate was not different between the populations with different eating habits. The Improved Wright-Giemsa Fast Dyeing method used in this study was good in detecting the positive rates and easy to handle. The risk factors to EPE infection were livestock contacting, washing their hands not promptly or washing hands without soap or other cleaning products after contacting.