Prevalence of parasitic contamination of raw vegetables consumed in Birjand city, South Khorasan province

Abstract

ObjectiveFood transmitted parasitic disease can be considered as one of the most common diseases in different societies and transmitted via water, soil and food. The goal of this cross-sectional descriptive-analytic research was to determine the prevalence and type of parasitic contaminated vegetables in Birjand city in 2017. Methods196 samples were obtained from 12 kind of vegetables including leek, radish, cress, mint, basil, dill, coriander, parsley, scallion, spinach and lettuce from 20 green groceries in all parts of the city. After the washing steps, each of the samples was centrifuged, sedimented and stained. The samples were examined for the presence of metazoan and protozoan parasitic contaminations. Cysts of Giardia lamblia were partly purified via the sucrose density gradient technique. After freeze-thaw cycles, genomic DNA became extracted the usage of QIAamp Stool Mini package. The results of the study were reported as descriptive statistics (mean and percentage) and analyzed by X2 tests at a significant level of p ≤ 0.05. ResultsThe total contamination of vegetables in the city of Birjand was reported to be 78.5%. The most elevated rate of contamination was related to Entamoeba coli parasite (46%), followed by Giardia lamblia (18.3%). The highest rate of contamination was detected in fenugreek, basil and celery vegetables, which 100% of the samples contained at least one kind of parasite. In this study, pathogens and non-pathogens were found in 52.1% and 47.9% of the samples, respectively. ConclusionResults shows that the rate of parasitic contamination in this study was relatively high, which can led to prevalence of parasitic diseases in humans.