Fig 1.
Procedure of the Kato-Katz storing experiment.
Fig 2.
Procedure of the whole sample storing experiment.
Fig 3.
Procedure of the homogenizing experiment.
Table 1.
Sample size, number of infections and infection intensities by experiment and parasite based on the first Kato-Katz thick smear.
Fig 4.
Kato-Katz storing experiment: Absolute median fecal egg counts (FEC) change over time for (A) hookworm (n = 67 for room temperature, n = 62 for refrigerator), (B) A. lumbricoides (n = 38) and (C) T. trichiura (n = 85).
Blue = refrigerator temperature, red = room temperature, A. lumbricoides = Ascaris lumbricoides, T. trichiura = Trichuris trichiura.
Table 2.
Kato-Katz storing experiment: Results for hookworm, Ascaris lumbricoides and Trichuris trichiura.
FECs = fecal egg counts, A. lumbricoides = Ascaris lumbricoides, T. trichiura = Trichuris trichiura, min = minutes, h = hours.
Fig 5.
Whole sample storing experiment: Relative fecal egg counts (FEC) change over time for (A) hookworm (n = 259), (C) Ascaris lumbricoides (n = 163), (E) Trichuris trichiura (n = 313) and absolute FEC numbers and relative FEC change between day 0 and day 1 for hookworm (B), Ascaris lumbricoides (D) and Trichuris trichiura (F). For A, C and E: Dashed line = median. For B, D and F: Line = mean. Blue = refrigerator temperature, red = room temperature, A. lumbricoides = Ascaris lumbricoides, T. trichiura = Trichuris trichiura.
Table 3.
Whole sample storing experiment: Mean FECs of day 0, day 1 and day 2 for hookworm, A. lumbricoides and T. trichiura.
Rel change = relative change, FECs = fecal egg counts, A. lumbricoides = Ascaris lumbricoides, T. trichiura = Trichuris trichiura.
Fig 6.
Homogenizing experiment: Relative fecal egg counts (FEC) differences from the overall mean per sample (over 7 observations) after different lengths of homogenization for (A) hookworm (n = 28), (B) A. lumbricoides (n = 19) and (C) T. trichiura (n = 52). Figures show boxplots and observed values (jittered). A. lumbricoides = Ascaris lumbricoides, T. trichiura = Trichuris trichiura.
Table 4.
Homogenizing experiment: Mean fecal egg counts (FECs), mean relative differences from the grand mean FECs per sample (over 7 observations), standard deviation of the relative differences and mean values of the residuals estimated from the random effect regression model.
A. lumbricoides = Ascaris lumbricoides, T. trichiura = Trichuris trichiura.
Fig 7.
Final recommendations on the procedure of the Kato-Katz technique.