StatSpin OvaTube – Parasite Detection Test
Parasite eggs, in the faeces of companion animals, is the simplest tell-tale sign that your cat, dog or rescued hedgehog has a potentially weakening parasite infestation. Your veterinary laboratory can quickly find, identify and count parasite eggs and oocytes with the StatSpin OvaTube diagnostic kit.
Keeping companion animals free from intestinal parasites has always been acknowledged as fundamental to their health and well being. Wildlife rescue centres and animal sanctuaries too are increasingly aware of the need to test for gut parasites, medicate where necessary and monitor constantly.
Centrifugal Flotation Speeds Up The Separation
Before the built-in convenience of the StatSpin OvaTube, finding any parasite eggs and getting them out of the animal’s faeces was a long and dirty job, not exactly popular with veterinary technicians and animal sanctuary workers. Gravity Flotation, where a sample of faeces is mixed with a solution midway in density between faeces and eggs took up a lot of laboratory time. Centrifugal Flotation speeded up the separation of the denser faeces from less dense eggs but demanded an expensive, specialised a centrifuge.
The StatSpin kit not only speeds up the flotation process, using only a standard veterinary centrifuge, it completely eliminates the need to handle the faeces at any time from taking the sample to reading the microscope slide. And, if you haven’t got a laboratory centrifuge, you can still recover the parasite eggs by Gravity Flotation by just standing the tubes for 15 minutes.
Just A Few Minutes In A Centrifuge
StatSpin oocyte recovery starts with a small plastic coring tool, which cuts a plug of material from the animal’s faeces. This is mashed with flotation fluid in the plastic separation tube. A few minutes in a centrifuge, or a while longer by gravity, sends the heavier faeces to the bottom while the lighter eggs float to the top. Brief contact between a microscope coverslip and the fluid at the top of the tube is enough to transfer the floating eggs for examination and counting under the microscope.
For animal sanctuaries, charities and rescue centres, tailor-made flotation solutions and microscope transfer slides complement the 10-test and economical 50-test kits and make for cost-effective assessment of an animal’s health before and after anti-parasite treatment. For the busy veterinary practice, the speed and convenience of the centrifuge mediated test means that a diagnosis can often be made and treatment prescribed while the patient is still at the practice.
Contact our expert team for further guidance. Also, take a look at our full range of diagnostic kits.
