For each child, blood was collected

after a visit to his or her residence, and the child’s legal guardian completed a questionnaire containing clinical and epidemiological data including symptoms of bronchitis and asthma, skin allergies, habits of geophagy and onicophagy, the presence of dogs and cats in the peridomicile, and the frequency of the child’s visits to the public square each week. The anti-Toxocara spp. IgG antibodies were IBET151 studied by the ELISA method, using excreted/secreted antigens of second-stage larvae of T. canis (TES) obtained according to Rubinsky-Elefant et al. (2006). All samples were tested in duplicate. The sensitivity and specificity of the immunoenzyme test were 78% and 92% respectively ( Glickman et al., 1978). The serum samples were sent to the Environmental Parasitology Laboratory of the State University of Maringá (LPA/UEM), Paraná, and stored at −20 °C until analyzed. The data for eosinophilia (≥600 cells/mm3) for

each child were obtained at the Clinical Analyses Laboratory of the Paranaense University (Unipar) in Umuarama, with the use of the Cell-Dyn 3500 automatic hematology analyzer (Abbot Diagnostics). The degree of eosinophilia was classified according to Naveira (1960): absent (≧1% and ≦4%), Selleck Onalespib eosinophilia Grade I (>4% and ≦10%), Grade II (>10% and ≦20%), Grade III (>20% and ≦50%) and Grade IV (>50%). In each public square, samples of 100 g of sand were collected at five different points, one at each edge and another in the center of the area, to a depth of approximately

Astemizole 5 cm below the soil surface, for a total of 500 g. For the locations with grass turfs, their total length was divided into five equidistant points, one at each edge and the other in the center. At each point, a 20 cm × 10 cm piece of grass turf was removed. The samples were placed in plastic bags and sent to the LPA/UEM, where they were processed on the day of collection. The samples were processed by the water-sedimentation technique (Lutz, 1919), indicated to ascarids eggs (Oliveira-Rocha and Mello, 2005), with some modifications: 1) 35 g of the total 100 g sample of sand collected at each point were diluted and homogenized in 150 mL of distilled water and the individual grass-turf samples were washed with 150 mL of distilled water. The presence of dogs or cats in the squares was noted, and any fresh dog feces present were collected for laboratory analysis. During the domicile visits, the presence of dogs and/or cats in the peridomiciles of the residences of the children participating in the study was observed. In these cases, the owner was requested to collect the fecal material of the animals in a plastic flask. All the fecal samples were processed by the water-sedimentation technique (Lutz, 1919). For each sample, 2 g of feces was diluted and homogenized in 150 mL of distilled water.