Schistosome worms of the genus Schistosoma are the causative agents of schistosomiasis, a devastating parasitic disease affecting more than 240 million people worldwide. Schistosomes have complex life cycles, and have been challenging to manipulate genetically due to the dearth of molecular tools. Although the use of gene overexpression, gene knockouts or knockdowns are straight-forward genetic...

Water buffalo and yellow cattle are the two of the most important natural reservoir hosts for Schistosoma japonicum in endemic areas of China, although their susceptibility differs, with water buffalo being less conducive to the growth and development of S. japonicum. Results from the current study show that the general morphology and ultrastructure of adult schistosomes derived from the two ho...

India is uniquely positioned with regard to schistosomes and schistosomiasis-discovering seven new mammalian species with the existence of three more schistosome species: Orientobilharzia turkestanicum, O. harinasutai, and Schistosoma haematobium(?). An endemic focus of urinary schistosomiasis was reported from Gimvi village of Ratnagiri, Maharashtra with infrequent occurrence of schistosome eg...

net) with the maximum-likelihood algorithm and a boot-strap of 1,000 replicates, we constructed a phylogenetic tree (online Technical Appendix Figure). All 8 sequences clustered within subtype 4d of HEV. The sequences were similar to each other (95.5%–99.8% similarity in nucleotide sequence) and similar to sequences reported for other cattle (83.3%–85.3%; online Technical Appendix Figure). More...

Schistosomes are trematode parasites and of worldwide medical importance for humans and animals. Growth and development of these parasites require a specific host environment, but also permanent communication processes between the two genders. Accumulating molecular evidence indicates that the responsible interactions are mediated by signal transduction processes. Conserved signaling molecules ...

Schistosomes infect more than 200 million of the world's poorest people. These parasites live in the vasculature, producing eggs that spur a variety of chronic, potentially life-threatening, pathologies exacerbated by the long lifespan of schistosomes, that can thrive in the host for decades. How schistosomes maintain their longevity in this immunologically hostile environment is unknown. Here,...

pathologically important Platyhelminthes include the digenetic trematodes Opisthorchis, Clonorchis, Paragonimus, Fasci%psis and Fascio/a and the cestodes (tapeworms). Ali the schistosomes that mature in man belong to the genus Schistosoma of the family Schistosomatidae, which contains Il other genera, some of which cause cercarial dermatitis (Rollinson & Southgate, 1987). The genus Schistosoma ...

background: the present study was carried out to detect the infection of larval stages of trichobilharzia species in the snail lymnaea auricularia in northwestern iran based on dna analysis. methods: a total number of 320 snails of l. auricularia were sampled from four water-bodies located in the suburb of urmia city, north west iran, during may to november 2011. the snails were first microscop...