Original Article Investigation of Possible Correlation between Giardia duodenalis Genotypes and Clinical Symptoms in Southwest of Iran

Background: Giardia duodenalis is one of the most important human enteric parasites throughout the world. Clinical symptoms of this parasite vary from asymptomatic infection to chronic diarrhea. Still it is not clear, whether different types of pathogenesis are due to different strains of organism or to variable host factors. The purpose of this study was to investigate possible correlation of clin-ical symptoms with assemblages among symptomatic and asymptomatic cases collected from southwest of Iran. Methods: Fecal samples were collected from 100 symptomatic and asympto-matic cases, which were positive for G. duodenalis. The samples were subjected to semi-nested PCR and RFLP for gdh gene. Results: Among symptomatic patients, 54 % had mixed genotypes AII and BIII, 28 % and 18 % of samples indicated assemblages BIII and AII, respectively. In contrast, among asymptomatic cases, 64%, 26 % and 10%samples had mixed genotypes, BIII and AII assemblages, respectively. Statistical analysis using Chi