Onchocerciasis is a major cause of blindness. Although the World Health Organization has been successful in reducing onchocerciasis as a public health problem in parts of West Africa, there remain an estimated 17 million people infected with Onchocerca volvulus, the parasite that causes this disease. Ocular pathology can be manifested in any part of the eye, although disease manifestations are ...

BACKGROUND Onchocerciasis caused by Onchocerca volvulus is the world's second leading infectious cause of blindness. There is currently no cure for the disease. Ivermectin, the current drug of choice is only microfilaricidal and suboptimal response to it is increasingly being reported. Thus, in contributing to the search for a cure, crude extracts and chromatographic fractions of Craterispermum...

BACKGROUND The World Health Organization (WHO) aims at eliminating onchocerciasis by 2020 in selected African countries. Current control focuses on community-directed treatment with ivermectin (CDTI). In Ghana, persistent transmission has been reported despite long-term control. We present spatial and temporal patterns of onchocerciasis transmission in relation to ivermectin treatment history. ...

Human Onchocerciasis, caused by infection the filarial nematode Onchocerca volvulus , is a neglected public health disease that affects millions of people in endemic regions sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. It also called river blindness because Blackflies transmit breeds rapidly flowing fresh water streams rivers. This review features state-of-the-art data on parasite, its endobacteria Wo...

ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters comprise a large paralogous protein family and several confer drug resistance. Ivermectin (IVM) is the only drug approved for treatment of onchocerciasis and is a substrate for some ABC transporters. Furthermore, there is accumulating evidence that IVM selects on some ABC transporter genes in Onchocerca volvulus and other parasitic nematodes. The onchocer...

Human onchocerciasis, caused by the filarial nematode Onchocerca volvulus, is controlled almost exclusively by the drug ivermectin, which prevents pathology by targeting the microfilariae. However, this reliance on a single control tool has led to interest in vaccination as a potentially complementary strategy. Here, we describe the results of a trial in West Africa to evaluate a multivalent, s...

Immunological cross-reactivity among nematodes has hampered the development of specific serodiagnostic assays for onchocerciasis. In the present study, an Onchocerca volvulus adult worm complementary DNA expression library was differentially screened with human sera from patients infected with O. volvulus and with an omnibus anti-nematode serum pool comprised of sera from patients infected with...

Effects of ivermectin and moxidectin were compared on two filarial species: Monanema martini which presents dermal microfilariae and induces Onchocerca-like lesions in its natural murid host Lemniscomys striatus, and Litomosoides sigmodontis (= L. carinii). M. martini microfilariae showed an unusual resistance to ivermectin, in vitro and in vivo; moxidectin was no more efficient. However, the t...

To investigate the role of eosinophil activation and sequestration in the development and severity of adverse reactions after the treatment of Onchocerca volvulus infection, 40 O. volvulus-infected Ghanaians were randomized to receive placebo or standard- or high-dose ivermectin. Subjects were examined for typical physiologic and clinical events before and up to 48 h after treatment. Plasma sam...