Reduced centrifugation duration improves diagnostic performance of an equine tapeworm egg counting technique

Anoplocephala perfoliata , can cause severe health problems in horses. Standard coprological tests have performed poorly for detecting A. perfoliata , and while a centrifugation-enhanced flotation technique is superior to other techniques, it is time consuming due to three 10-minute centrifugation steps. This study aimed to evaluate modifications of this technique that reduce the centrifugation durations to 5 and 1 min, respectively. Fecal samples were collected from ten adult A. perfoliata egg count positive mares and divided into 9 subsamples to allow for three replicate counts for each of the three protocols. The standard 10-minute centrifugation had a mean coefficient of variation (CV) of 76.8% and a 95% confidence interval of 61.4% − 92.1%, while the 5-min and 1-min protocols had CVs of 68.6% (53.7%-83.4%) and 59.0% (48.7% − 69.4%), respectively. Furthermore, the 10-min protocol yielded 70.7% positive counts compared to 82.9% and 86.2% for the 5-min and 1-min protocols, respectively. The 5-min and 1-min protocols were also superior in egg count magnitude, with significantly higher medians compared to the 10-min protocol. Overall, these data demonstrate that reducing the centrifugation time to one minute will improve test performance for detecting and quantifying equine tapeworm eggs in fecal samples.