Endemic angiostrongyliasis in the Brazilian Amazon: Natural parasitism of Angiostrongylus cantonensis in Rattus rattus and R. norvegicus, and sympatric giant African land snails, Achatina fulica

Abstract

Angiostrongylus cantonensis, the rat lungworm, is one etiological agent of eosinophilic meningoencephalitis in humans. This zoonosis is frequently found in Asia and, more recently, in North America, Caribbean Island and northeastern of South America. Until now, research of A. cantonensis in southern, southeastern and northeastern regions of Brazil has been found natural infections only terrestrial and freshwater intermediate snail hosts (Achatina fulica, Sarasinula marginata, Subulina octona, Bradybaena similaris and Pomacea lineate). In this study, we examined the occurrence of helminthes in the synantropic rodents Rattus rattus and Rattus norvegicus in northern Brazil, focusing on the role of these species as vertebrate hosts of A. cantonensis and A. fulica as intermediate host have found natural. Thirty specimens of R. rattus and twelve of R. norvegicus were collected in the Guamá and Jurunas neighborhoods of the city of Belém, in the Brazilian state of Pará, of which almost 10% harbored adult worms in their pulmonary arteries. Sympatric A. fulica were found to be infected by L(3) larvae, which experimental infection confirmed to be A. cantonensis. Natural infection of snails and rodents with A. cantonensis was confirmed through morphological and morphometrical analyses of adults and larvae using light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and molecular sequences of partial Cytochrome Oxidase subunit I. Phylogenetic analyses showed that A. cantonensis isolated from Pará, Brazil is similar to Japan isolate; once these specimens produced a single haplotype with high bootstrap support with Rio de Janeiro isolate. This study confirms that A. cantonensis is now endemic in northern Brazil, and that R. rattus and R. norvegicus act as natural definitive hosts, and A. fulica as the intermediate host of the parasite in this region.

Caramujo Africano: Apenas Uma Espécie Introduzida Ou Um Problema De Saúde Pública?

“…Recentemente, Moreira et al (2013) encontraram também o rato preto (Rattus rattus Linnaeus, 1758) infectado com larvas de A. cantonensis em Belém/PA. Esse rato é originário do sudeste asiático.…”

“…Caramujos africanos parasitados por A. cantonensis tem sido reportado no Espírito Santo, Pará, Paraná, Pernambuco, Rio Grande Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina e São Paulo (LIMA et al, 2009;MALDONADO JÚNIOR et al, 2010MOREIRA et al, 2013;OLIVEIRA et al, 2015). Carvalho et al (2012) conduziram um amplo estudo em áreas portuárias no Brasil procurando registrar a presença de A. cantonensis em moluscos terrestres.…”

Hurdles in the evolutionary epidemiology of Angiostrongylus cantonensis: Pseudogenes, incongruence between taxonomy and DNA sequence variants, and cryptic lineages

“…For example, ribosomal DNA sequences were used to assess metastrongylid nematode relationships (Carreno & Nadler, 2003) or to help survey larvae from mollusk intermediate hosts (Fontanilla & Wade, 2008; Qvarnstrom, Sullivan, Bishop, Hollingsworth, & da Silva, 2007; Qvarnstrom et al., 2010), and ~360‐bp region of the cytochrome c oxidase 1 ( CO 1) gene was used to assess relationships to other species of Angiostrongylus (Eamsobhana et al., 2010). To date, molecular systematic/phylogeographic studies on A. cantonensis have mainly used two mitochondrial (mtDNA) markers, CO 1 and cytochrome b ( CYTB ), where the focus has largely been descriptive in terms of reporting local patterns of haplotype variants (Aghazadeh et al., 2015; Dalton, Fenton, Cleveland, Elsmo, & Yabsley, 2017; Dusitsittipon, Criscione, Morand, Komalamisra, & Thaenkham, 2017; Dusitsittipon, Thaenkham, Watthanakulpanich, Adisakwattana, & Komalamisra, 2015; Eamsobhana, Song, et al., 2017; Eamsobhana, Yong, et al., 2017; Lv et al., 2012; Monte et al., 2012; Moreira et al., 2013; Nakaya et al., 2013; Okano et al., 2014; Rodpai et al., 2016; Simoes et al., 2011; Tokiwa et al., 2012, 2013; Vitta et al., 2016; Yong, Eamsobhana, Song, Prasartvit, & Lim, 2015; Yong, Song, Eamsobhana, Goh, & Lim, 2015; Yong, Song, Eamsobhana, & Lim, 2016). …”

Standardization of a multiplex real-time PCR test for the identification of Angiostrongylus cantonensis, A. costaricensis and A. vasorum

“…El parásito adulto se aloja en la arteria pulmonar de roedores que eliminan las larvas de primera etapa (L 1 ) en las heces (9), y los caracoles se infectan con estas larvas al comer las heces del roedor. Dentro del molusco, la larva se desarrolla en las etapas L 2 y L 3 , para luego abandonar el huésped invertebrado (10). Además, el nematodo tiene huéspedes paraténicos, como crustáceos, sapos y planarias, que facilitan su dispersión a diversos ecosistemas donde habitan mamíferos, aves y personas, los cuales son huéspedes accidentales en riesgo de contraer la enfermedad (9,11).…”