The Frequency of Q Fever by Gender in the Human Population of Western Macedonia

Q fever is a widespread zoonosis caused by Coxiella burnetii. The aim of the paper is to try and determine the possible gender difference related to the emergence of the Q Fever. People of all ages with different epidemiological conditions were examined. A total of 267 female serums were analyzed, of which 59 samples resulted positive with e relative frequency of 22.09 % and of 253 male serums which were examined, 55 resulted positive with e relative frequency of 21.73 %. The positivity has been based on the Cut-off value OD, which is above 0.5 in the positive cases. The serological test was conducted using the ELISA test kit by the German SERION Company. The serum isolates from the blood were kept at -30C until testing. The sera were properly diluted based on the respective protocol, in the ratio of 1: 400, in two phases (dilution 1: 100 and 1: 4). As regards the relative frequency between the genders, the difference in positive cases is only 0.36 %, which implies that the epidemiology of the Q Fever is not gender dependent.