| dc.description.abstract-translated | The main aim of this study is to determine the prevalence and subtype diversity of the gut protist Blastocystis spp. in a volunteer group across the Czech Republic. Interestingly, Blastocystis has been recently considered as a part of the healthy gut microbiome in human. Beside the prevalence study, some factors such as animal contact, lifestyle, gender, and age have been associated with the presence of this gut protist in this sample dataset. We used two different diagnostic methods for detection of Blastocystis presence or absence: i) xenic cultivation and ii) specific PCR, based on which is also possible to distinguish Blastocystis subtypes. In total, we collected 411 samples from which 360 were processed within this study so far. Of these, the total prevalence of Blastocystis was determined - 21 % in humans and 9 % in animals. Nine subtypes were detected (ST1-ST7, ST10, ST14), of which six were detected in humans (ST1-ST4, ST6, ST7). We found out that some factors such as age, lifestyle (traveling, urban vs. rural) and contact with animals might affect the human colonization with Blastocystis, while we didn't detect any correlations in case of gender. Based on our results, we realized that PCR is more sensitive than cultivation | eng |
