TREATMENT OF LOIASIS BY FILARIOPHERESIS

To prevent the side effects as encephalitis, related with diethylcarba mazine treatment in loiasis, an exchange blood transfusion was propose d. To avoid the disadvantage of this heavy technique, the authors are proposing filariopheresis to trap the microfilariae using cytapheresis technique and filtration. They obtained a medium 75 p. cent microfila r ae extraction : 55-70 p. cent by cytapheresis and 5-20 p. cent by fi ltration. The number of blood cells must be supervised as an important decrease of the platelets may occur temporary. This simple and not ex pensive technique is efficient, but diethylcarbamazine treatment must be institued very quickly after filariopheresis session. Furthermore, the millions of microfilariae collected can provide useful antigen for immuno-parasitological tests.