Abstract

The etiologic agent of tetanus, Clostridium tetani, is an obligate anaerobic and spore-forming bacillus; and remains an important public health problem in developing countries. Although, the diagnosis is based mainly on history and presentation of tetanus symptoms. Some recent reports indicate that a patient may not manifest any symptoms of localized or generalized tetanus. However, one of the new approaches for accurate and rapid detection of microbial pathogens is a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) followed by fluorescence detection. In this report, we have described a fluorescent amplification based specific hybridization (FLASH) based PCR assay for detection of C. tetani. The results of the present study indicated that the FLASH based PCR assay appear to be a suitable and rapid method for identification of cultured isolates of C. tetani.

Key words: Clostridium tetani, molecular diagnosis, fluorescent amplification based specific hybridization (FLASH) polymerase chain reaction (PCR), fluorescent probe.