Review and update of paramphistomosis

Abstract

Despite records of ruminal paramphistomes in Argentina dating back to the beginning of the XX century, in the last decade cases have increased in number with evidence of spreading to new geographical areas. This fact led us to carry out some studies in the last few years in order to enhance the poor availability of reports in South America, some of which are actually performed in our group. This paper reviews the characteristics of the life cycles and some aspects of the disease both at world and local level, and updates the latest paramphistome reports in domestic ruminants of Argentina.

Prevalence of Paramphistomum infection in cattle and sheep in Van Province, Turkey

“…Adult paramphistomes are the main parasites in the rumen and reticulum of sheep, goats, cattle and water buffaloes. Their early stages are in small intestine and then migrate through the abomasum towards the rumen (Sanabria & Romero, 2008). The harm caused by this infection in bovine affects production, since these parasites provoke a lower nutritious conversion, a loss of weight and/or a decrease in milk production, which cause economic losses.…”

Amphistomes

“…ITS2 has been found to be a useful marker for species identifi cation of amphistomes as well [ 59 , 60 , 115 -118 ]. In particular, the combination of PCR-RFLP analysis, which is a widely used method for the accurate determination of helminth parasites [ 119 , 120 ], has been successfully used for characterizing some amphistome genera and species; Itagaki and colleagues [ 116 ] characterized three different genera by ribosomal DNA (rDNA) Internal Transcribed Spacer 2 (ITS-2), whereas Rinaldi and colleagues [ 117 ] applied a similar technique using the ITS-2 of Calicophoron daubneyi from different defi nitive hosts and Sanabria and colleagues [ 121 ] generated restriction profi les for Paramphistomum spp. Another variant of PCR, PCR-RAPD has also been used for species identifi cation of three amphistome fl ukes, viz., Paramphistomum epiclitum , Orthocoelium streptocoelium and Fischoederius elongatus .…”

Immunoaffinity chromatographic analysis for purification of specific diagnostic antigens of Paramphistomum epiclitum

“…However, the confirmation of most of the helminth diseases is done through detection of eggs in the faeces. In paramphistomosis, it is highly probable not to find eggs or only very few, due to massive infestation with young flukes and relatively long prepatent period therefore, early immunological diagnosis is important (Sanabria and Romero 2008). Immunological and serum antibody detection techniques are not conclusive (Horak 1967(Horak , 1971Alabay 1981;Singh et al 1983) as the potential of immunodiagnostic assays for early detection of helminth infections is marred by non specificity and cross-reactions, because of shared common antigenic epitopes in several trematodes ).…”