Natural vs. experimental hosts: The peculiar case of Taenia asiatica
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2016
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Elsevier BV
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Abstract
Dear Editor, We have read with interest the review article by Ito and colleagues recently published in your journal (Ito et al., 2015), mainly focusing on Taenia solium, but also concerning other human Taenia species. We would like to contribute to this review briefly, clarifying some facts appearing in the article related to life cycles, and more specifically, to the intermediate hosts of Taenia asiatica. Knowledge on mammals being the most important source of human infection is vital for the implementation of control measures of taeniasis/cysticercosis to succeed. In order to obtain further information about host/parasite relationships, experimental infection of a range of mammals acting as potential intermediate hosts might be useful. However, a positive result in an experimental infection does not necessarily have to be related to the actual role of that mammal in the transmission of the parasite in natural conditions. In fact, pigs have never been considered intermediate hosts for Taenia saginata although pigs have indeed been successfully infected with T. saginata eggs (Fan et al., 1992). Likewise, cattle have never been included in the list of T. solium intermediate hosts in spite of the fact that T. solium eggs are also able to experimentally infect cattle successfully (Gusso et al., 2000).
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Galán-Puchades, M. T., & Fuentes, M. V. (2016). Natural vs. experimental hosts: The peculiar case of Taenia asiatica. En Infection, Genetics and Evolution (Vol. 38, p. 54). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.meegid.2015.11.003