الفهرس 
ContentsOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Background: Trachoma remains a serious health problem despite of great advances in therapeutic regimen. In Egypt, the high prevalence of trachoma represents a major cause of ocular morbidity and blindness especially in rural areas. Objective: The aim of this work is to diagnose Chlamydia trachomatis as an important cause of trachoma to confirm the clinical diagnosis and to evaluate the enzyme linked immunosorbent assay in direct detection of C.trachomatis antigen in conjunctival scrapings and C.trachomatis antibodies in sera of trachomatous patients.Methods: The study was carried out on 45 cases having clinical signs of trachoma and included two groups of patients; the first group included 20 active cases ranging from 412 years (group I) and the second group included 25 cicatricial cases ranging from 3672 years. Results: The prevalence of trachoma was totally higher in female. The residence of active and cicatricial cases was higher in rural than urban area. Evaluation of direct antigen detection of C.trachomatis in conjunctival scrapings by ELISA revealed that out of 45 trachoma cases there were 7 positive cases (15.6%) included 3 active cases (15%) and 4 cicatricial cases (16%) with insignificant difference between them (P > 0.05). Among 45 cases, IgM detection of C.trachomatis was positive in 5 cases (11.1%) included 3 active cases (15%) and 2 cicatricial cases (8%) with insignificant difference between them (P > 0.05). Detection of C.trachomatis IgG revealed 20 positive cases (44.4%), all of them were cicatricial cases (80%) which were significantly higher than active cases (P < 0.001).Conclusion & Recommendations: Direct antigen detection test and serodiagnosis of C.trachomatis IgM by ELISA are more reliable than ELISA IgG in diagnosis of active trachoma infection. ELISA IgG is a reliable method in the serodiagnosis of cicatricial phase of trachoma but of a little diagnostic value in active infection. In bilaterally affected patients it is better to obtain bilateral scrapings to provide more chance for antigen detection.