to microfilariae that use the blood as transport from the lungs to the skin. Some filarial worms, such as M. streptocerca and O. volvulus, produce microfilariae that do not use the blood; they reside in the skin only. For these worms, diagnosis relies upon skin snips and can be carried out at any time.

In past, one of the first successes in the efforts to improve sensitivity and specificity of filarial diagnostic tests was identification of the repeated sequences in the parasite genome. The advancement in technologies like polymerase chain reaction