BACKGROUND Fish-borne zoonotic trematodes (FZT) are a food safety and health concern in Vietnam. Humans and other final hosts acquire these parasites from eating raw or under-cooked fish with FZT metacercariae. Fish raised in ponds are exposed to cercariae shed by snail hosts that are common in fish farm ponds. Previous risk assessment on FZT transmission in the Red River Delta of Vietnam ident...

Experiments demonstrated that infestation with the oligochaete worm, Chaetogaster limnaei, afforded a degree of protection to the snail Australorbis glabratus when the snail was exposed to Schistosoma mansoni miracidia. To a lesser extent, the oligochaetes protected snails exposed to echinostome cercariae. The presence of C. limnaei within the kidney of the snail Physa heterostropha is reported...

A protocol was created for performing geographically randomized snail surveys for schistosomiasis research using the global positioning system (GPS). This protocol differs from traditional surveys in its ability to accurately map and measure the spatial distribution of snail habitat. The protocol was used to map irrigation ditches, the primary habitat for Oncomelania hupensis, in two residence ...

Snails (Mollusca : Gastropoda) are an ideal bio-indicators for palaeo-environments and water quality (pollution) and are much more useful in the classification of ecological diverse aquatic habitats.1-3 These aquatic snails also complete the life cycle of digenetic trematode parasites causing various dreaded trematodiasis diseases in vertebrates including men. Indeed these snails are an interme...

Extinction may alter competitive interactions among surviving species, affecting their subsequent recovery and evolution, but these processes remain poorly understood. Analysis of predation traces produced by shell-drilling muricid snails on bivalve prey reveals that species interactions were substantially different before and after a Plio-Pleistocene mass extinction in the western Atlantic. Mu...

We report the first finding of Lymnaea viatrix south of parallel 41 masculine S, in rural and urban areas from Argentina. Ninety snails were collected during year 2000, from a concrete pond at a Public Square in El Bolsón Village, Río Negro province, and 811 snails in November 1999, and during 2000 from waterbodies within a farm at Cholila locality, Chubut province. Fasciola hepatica infection ...

the biology of immature stages of s.sphegea and different techniques for their laboratory rearing has been studied during the past five years (1972-77). this fly is one of the 18 iranian species of snail-killing flies which is dominant in the focus area of schistosomiasis (khuzestan province) in the south-west of iran. the following procedures improved appreciably our laboratory rearin-technics...

Much effort has been made to control schistosomiasis infection in Egypt. However, enduring effects from such strategies have not yet been achieved. In this study, we sought to determine the genetic variability related to the interaction between Biomphalaria alexandrina snails and Schistosoma mansoni. Using RAPD-PCR with eight (10 mers) random primers, we were able to determine the polymorphic m...

Schistosomiasis mansoni remains an important parasitic disease of man, endemic in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Caribbean. The aetiological agent is the trematode Schistosoma mansoni, whereas aquatic snails of the genus Biomphalaria act as intermediate hosts in the parasite life cycle. In Brazil, the distribution of Biomphalaria spp. is closely associ...