A total of 1339 residual nucleic acid extractions from stool samples were included in the assessment. Those materials comprised 20 residual samples from patients that had tested positive for intestinal microsporidiosis in the routine diagnostics department of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg (which is the German National Reference Center for Tropical Pathogens in Hamburg, Germany), 59 residual samples from a previous study in the Colombian tropics [42 (link)], 140 residual samples from migrants [43 (link)], 195 residual samples from German policemen deployed in the tropics [44 (link)], 22 residual samples from German soldiers [45 (link)] returning from tropical deployments, and 903 residual DNA samples from African HIV-positive patients from previous studies from Ghana [46 (link),47 (link)]. The samples were chosen to ensure a sufficient likelihood of intestinal carriage of microsporidia as associated with the history of travel [18 (link)] or immunosuppression [10 (link)]. In line with the ethical clearance for this test comparison, the residual sample materials were anonymized and no patient-specific data could be presented, which would be an admitted violation of the STARD (Standards for Reporting Diagnostic Accuracy) criteria [48 (link)]. All samples had been stored at −80 °C prior to their submission for periods between few months and 15 years.
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