Detection of Trichomonas vaginalis with standard diagnostics using urethral, vaginal and cervical swabs from males and females in Canton Sarajevo

Objectives: Trichomoniasis is a non-viral sexually transmitted infection (STI) caused by the protozoan parasite Trichomonas vaginalis (TV). The aim of our  study was to identify the most frequent TV isolates using urethral, vaginal and cervical swabs with standard diagnostics from males and females. Material and methods: The retrospective study was performed at the Department of  Microbiology, Institute for Public Health of Canton Sarajevo, from June 2016 to March  2017. Microscopic evaluation of wet preparations and cultivation were demonstrated as the most common method for TV diagnostics. Standard methods of descriptive statistics were applied. Results: The urethral swabs were collected all together with vaginal and cervical in absolute value of 4784 from males and females. T. vaginalis was identified with the frequency of  269 isolates. The highest prevalence of positive isolates was in June 13.3% (69/201) and July 11.1% (45/407) in 2016 while the lowest prevalence was in January 2017 with 2.1% (8/381). There were 53 cases of positive swabs among males and females from January to March 2017 in Canton Sarajevo and median age was 29 year interquartile range (25.0-37.5). Out of them 30 were males vs. females 23 respectively with no statistical significance (p>0.05). Conclusions: T. vaginalis was identified with standard diagnostics from urethral, vaginal and cervical swabs in high frequency from males. Our data suggest that wet mount examination of fresh samples contribute to increase the sensitivity in the diagnostics of trichomoniasis. Key words: T. vaginalis , STI, prevalence