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Researcher: Opala Farhat Naved
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, is a disease of the poor. It
affects the poor community, mostly due to their ignorance,
unhygienic living condition 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, 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 community to identify
the parasite species causing filariasis, which enable
quick and early treatment of the infection to save the
infected people from (1) becoming invalid, (2) becoming
burden of the poor family and (3) 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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