Onchocerca volvulus: application of the polymerase chain reaction to identification and strain differentiation of the parasite

Previous studies have demonstrated that the genome of Onchocerca volvulus contains a variable tandemly repeated DNA sequence family with a unit length of 150 bp. The variability of the 150-bp family has been exploited to develop O. volvulus strain and species specific DNA probes. Application of these DNA probes to the study of the epidemiologically most significant life cycle stages of the parasite has been confounded by several obstacles. These include the relative insensitivity of some of the DNA probes and the difficulty in releasing genomic DNA from infective larvae and skin microfilariae in a form that may be directly detected by hybridization to the probes. DNA sequence comparison of 18 known examples of the 150-bp repeat has been used to develop two populations of degenerate oligonucleotides. These oligonucleotides have been shown to support the amplification of the 150-bp repeat family from Onchocerca DNA, using the polymerase chain reaction. Both strain and species specific members of the repeat family are faithfully amplified, allowing characterization of a parasite on the basis of hybridization of the PCR amplification products to the previously developed DNA probes. This method is shown to be applicable to all diagnostically important forms of the parasite, including adults, infective larvae, and skin microfilariae. In addition, the method is capable of detecting O. volvulus infective larvae directly in extracts of blackfly vectors.