Comparative Analysis of Wet Mount and Diamond Media for Detecting Trichomonas vaginalis Among Women in Duhok City, Iraq

Trichomoniasis infection can be described as the worlds universal sexually transmitted disease (STD), caused by T. vaginalis. This parasite transmits mainly through sexual practices; however, it can also be transmitted through fomites. Women produce vaginitis, and the clinical manifestations include abundant greenish-yellow foamy, foul-smelling discharge, valvar swelling, itching, and punctate erythematous lesions of the cervix (also known as strawberry cervix'). There are many possible cases whereby women may not have symptoms but are infected. The current study is aimed to compare the diagnostic effectiveness of wet mount preparation and diamond media for detecting T. vaginalis infection in different sample types in the endocervical discharge, endocervical swab, and urine of 300 female patients female (married and unmarried), whose ages ranged between 15 and 62 years old, of the total 300 patients referred to Dohuk Maternity Hospital, Shariya Camp, inside or outside Dohuk city. The diagnosis of parasitic infection was confirmed on the clinical symptoms of patients by confirming the infection microscopically in the laboratory by two methods: direct wet mount preparation and culture by diamond media. The results of this study showed. In Dohuk Maternity Hospital, among 240 samples, 61 (25.4%) were infected, and in Shariya Camp, out of 60 samples, 15 (25%) were infected by T. vaginalis. Among 300 samples, 74 (24.6%) were found to be infected using wet mount preparation and 76 (25.3%) using culture diamond media. The present study on 258 married women found that 66 (25.5%) had trichomoniasis infection and among 42 unmarried women, 10 (23.8%) had the infection. The highest infection rate was observed in the (15-25) age group women (32.8%).