Comparison Of Antibody Titres To Febrile Antigens Of Samonella Species In Patients Tested By Different Widal Test Kits In Umuahia

ABSTRACT

Advances in hygiene and public health issues has led to the reduction of cases of enteric fever, or more commonly known as typhoid fever, in most of the developed countries. And yet, the disease is still a burden and remains endemic in most of the countries where such problems as unsafe drinking water, poor hygienic handling of food and inadequate sanitation exist widely. Typhoid fever is a disease caused by the bacteria Salmonella enterica subspecies one serotype Typhi the nomenclature of these organisms is somehow not uniformly agreed on; but the widely accepted and often used short form nomenclature is Salmonella typhi. A very similar but often less severe disease is caused by Salmonella enlerica subspecies I serotype Paratyphi A and B or in short form Salmonella Paratphi A and B (Reddy et at., 2010). Typhoid or enteric fever was first successfully defined by Sir William Jenner in the mid-l9th Century although most scholars agree that known outbreaks due to typhoid fever can be dated back to the 1 7th Century. Some scholars even claim outbreaks of typhoid fever in Athens happened from 478-460 BC and this speculation might have given an insight to possible ancestral strain of Salmonella enterica serovar typhi (Keddy et al., 2011)