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Comment by dcx | Hacker News Reader

Thanks, I'm certainly going to try that. I was more asking if anyone has experience getting tests done properly in light of their low accuracy. From what I understand, an antigen test is still a stool test, meaning they are only 50% accurate. As a commenter on this post shared, managing the health system is challenging in this area. I just did a bit of googling, and found a couple of leads here:

> CDC recommends collecting three stool samples from patients over several days for accurate test results. Commercial testing products for diagnosing giardiasis are available in the United States. [1]

Perhaps running three tests is the standard of care, or if not one might advocate for this based on the CDC recommendation. And if dismissed, perhaps there are commercial products available at the consumer level.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/giardia/hcp/diagnosis-testing/index.html

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Where I live, microbiologists work the diagnosis by examining stool through a microscope. Nowadays, though, doctors are lazy and just prescribe antiparasitaries without a diagnosis.

I was taught to suspect worms only in children and immunicompromised adults. And I never found the exception.

Odd that you never found what you weren't looking for ...

Depends on where you live. Parasites are utterly endemic in areas as close as a 30 minutes drive away from me. They are commonly found in patients of all ages, including otherwise normal functioning adults.

Depending on the epidemiology, testing a population is a waste of time and money. They have a very high chance of having the disease and a very high chance of reinfection even after treatment. So what happens is those patients come in every once in a while and they straight up ask for their periodic albendazole dose. And then they go back to their homes and they drink the exact same water and eat the exact same food.

> From what I understand, an antigen test is still a stool test, meaning they are only 50% accurate.

“Accuracy” is too vague. You want to find out what the sensitivity and specificity are.

https://ebn.bmj.com/content/23/1/2

For instance, a rapid covid test might have low sensitivity but high specificity. Meaning if it’s negative, you could still have the disease. But if it’s positive, you’re almost certainly sick. Ie the false negative rate is a lot higher than the false positive rate.

Technically a "rapid covid test" only detects the presence of certain viral genetic material. This usually means the patient is or recently was infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) but it doesn't indicate anything about whether the patient has COVID-19 (the disease). Many infections are asymptomatic and thus not medically classified as a disease state.

This distinction might seem pedantic but it's important to be precise when discussing medical issues.

If you want to be precise… There are different types of “rapid COVID test”, the most popular of which detect antigens, not ‘viral genetic material’. PCR tests detect genetic material. Both tests seem to have differing levels of sensitivity to each variant of the virus.

Stool tests are questionable to begin with.

> And if dismissed, perhaps there are commercial products available at the consumer level.

You can walk into Tractor Supply with a $20 bill and walk out with a horse-sized tube of fenbendazole paste and a few bucks in change.

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