COMPARISON OF RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF CULTURE AND SEROLOGIC~L METHODS IN TYPHOID FEVER DIAGNOSIS IN ABEOKUTA METROPOLIS

Abstract

Blood and stool samples collected from 106 typhoid-suspected patients of the Federal Medical Centre, Idi-Aba, Abeokuta, Ogun State were assessed for typhoid fever using two common methods: culturing of samples and widal agglutination test (serologic). Malaria parasite, blood and stool cultures of the patients were carried out within a period of six months. Out of the 106 patients, 35.84% were positive for widal agglutination test using I: e"160 as the cut-off I base-line antibody titre. 33.96.0% was recorded for malaria. Blood culture revealed 1.88% bacteria pathogens in the widal positive patients out of which 0.94% isolate was of Enterobacter sp., and 0.94% was of Klebsiella sp., while the stool culture revealed 9.43% bacterial pathogens out of which
5.60% was Salmonella typhi, 1.88 % was SalmoneLlaparatyphi and 1.88% was Escherichia coli. However
54.7% patients were on self- medicated antibiotic therapy before the tests were carried out, hence the 0% typhoidal bacillus in the blood culture. Other infectious agents such as bacterial, viral and even protozoan may mimic enteric fever. Consequently, this study further revealed that culture of stool, blood and urine samples of patients and others like bone marrow may be far superior to widal agglutination test for typhoid fever.