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Lymphatic Filariasis (LF), recognized as one of the major public health problems of Bangladesh, prevalent mostly in some of its northern districts with different degrees of endemicity as a disease of the poor. It affects the poor community, mostly due to their ignorance, unhygienic living conditions and prevalence of mosquito, causing permanent disability and deformity from gross enlargement of the limbs and genitalia known as elephantiasis. Physical disability prevents patients from having a normal social and economic life as a person’s social interaction and relationship, marital and job prospects are severely damaged. Added to these are the adverse psychological effects of exclusion, social stigma and discrimination. The methods currently in use in Bangladesh to detect LF, is based on microscopic analysis and complement fixation test (CFT), are of limited sensitivity, reliability and applicability. This research aims at establishing an optimum diagnostic method based on serodiagnosis and DNA polymorphism enabling the detection of filarial infection in sub-clinical level. Early diagnosis of the disease will prevent LF from resulting into irreversible deformities and damages of the body. Through this research an effort will be made to set a day time, low cost, sensitive, easy and non-invasive diagnostic methods for quick screening of the infected members of the community to identify the parasite species causing filariasis, which enable quick and early treatment of the infection to save the infected people from (i) becoming invalid, (ii) becoming burden of the poor family, and (iii) drainage of money for the incurable patient’s treatment. Since treatment in the sub-clinical level is very cheap, it is expected to be easier to eliminate the infection and monitor the status of infection before and after individual or mass treatment.
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