A cross-sectional population-based survey on the occurrence of lymphatic filariasis was carried out in the municipality of Cabo de Santo Agostinho, Pernambuco, Northeast Brazil. 7,650 individuals of both sexes were examined (from 1,416 households) of whom six tested positive for microfilaria according to the thick blood diagnostic test. The age of the individuals examined varied from 0 to 98 (a...

Microfilariae of Dirofilaria immitis were recovered from an experimentally infected dog and inoculated intravenously into adult female BALB/c mice. Each mouse received 1 X 10(5) microfilariae. In one experiment mice were sublethally irradiated with gamma radiation 24 h prior to microfilarial inoculation; microfilariae were counted at 11.00 and 23.00 h 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42 days after inocula...

Heartworm prevention: Major factors of resistance First, heartworm preventives were designed and marketed at doses intended to prevent infection by killing third-stage and young fourth-stage larvae, not microfilariae. Thus, microfilariae may persist despite exposure to a macrocyclic lactone (ML); these drug-selected microfilariae can be transmitted between dogs by mosquitoes. This seems an unwi...

Currently used protocols for the extraction of filarial parasite DNA from mosquito samples are tedious and involve extensive use of expensive and hazardous chemicals. Therefore, in order to arrive at a simple procedure, four different methods (A, B, C and D) were tried for the extraction of DNA from mosquitoes infected with filarial parasite, Brugia malayi. Method D was found to be as efficient...

1Research and Training Centre on Vectors of Diseases, Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. 2Infectious Diseases Division, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America. 3Department of Entomology, Faculty of Science, University of Cairo, Giza, Egypt. ABSTRACT The elimination strategy for lymphatic filariasis aims at reducing blood micr...

The Global Program for Elimination of Lymphatic Filariasis calls for mass drug administration for endemic populations outside of sub-Saharan Africa with a single dose of diethylcarbamazine (DEC) and albendazole (Alb) annually for 4-6 years. Single-dose DEC/Alb dramatically reduces blood microfilaria (MF) counts, but most treated subjects fail to completely clear MF after a single dose. A more e...

BACKGROUND The knowledge of the current prevalence of lymphatic filariasis and its transmission will be helpful in its elimination. Thus, the present study is aimed to determine its prevalence among hydrocele patients which is a common presentation in chronically infected cases. MATERIALS AND METHODS One hundred patients suffering from hydrocele admitted to the surgical ward were included in ...

Ultrastructure of microfilaria Brugia malayi was investigated with electron microscope. Microfilariae are covered by a sheath membrane with dense materials on its outer surfaces. The cuticle consists of 3 layers; namely, external cortical, internal cortical and fibrous layer. Beneath these cuticular layers, thin hypodermis is present and the muscle cells are arranged of 4 groups in a crosssecti...

Stein’s method for concentration inequalities was introduced to prove concentration of measure in problems involving complex dependencies such as random permutations and Gibbs measures. In this paper, we provide some extensions of the theory and three applications: (1) We obtain a concentration inequality for the magnetization in the Curie-Weiss model at critical temperature (where it obeys a n...