Historical view The parasite, Onchocerca volvulus, was first detected in a Ghanaian by a German missionary in 1890 and was nominated Filaria volvulus by Leuckart (1893). No pathogenicity of the parasite was found yet. In 1915, however, R. Robles reported the new distribution of this filarial parasite in Guatemala, Central America, after enormous parasitological, clinical and epidemiological stu...

On 10th of January 1970, I flew to Guatemala leaving New Orleans on board a TACA aircraft. This was my first trip to Guatemala C.A. expecting to visit Dr. Horacio Figueroa and endemic areas of onchocerciasis in there. During my stay in his house, he showed me a plantation called Panajabal located in the highland far from the capital, a paradise of onchocerciasis according to him, where almost a...

Onchocerciasis is a major cause of blindness worldwide, and much of the blindness is caused by onchocercal chorioretinitis. In an experimental animal model for ocular onchocerciasis, intravitreal injections of 10,000 live Onchocerca volvulus microfilariae isolated from infected humans into the eyes of cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) resulted in patchy, progressive loss of retinal pigme...

On July 21 of 1975, an agreement was signed to start a collaboration project for the research of onchocerciasis. For this project, Japan decided to send researchers to Guatemala to aid Guatemalan staff of technicians in a research to combat a disastrous filariasis. This disease was discovered in this country by Dr. Rodolfo Robles in the year 1915 and that is why it is known as Robles disease. T...

There has long been interest in determining if mass ivermectin administration for onchocerciasis has 'unknowingly' interrupted lymphatic filariasis (LF) transmission where the endemicity of the two diseases' overlaps. We studied 11 communities in central Nigeria entomologically for LF by performing mosquito dissections on Anopheline LF vectors. Six of the communities studied were located within...

A high prevalence of epilepsy is reported in many onchocerciasis-endemic regions. In this paper we discuss recent epidemiological and clinical aspects as well as public health implications of onchocerciasis-associated epilepsy (OAE) and propose a strategy to reduce the burden of disease. OAE probably presents in a variety of clinical manifestations, including the nodding syndrome and the Nakala...

A study of 326 volunteers from a rural farm settlement in Aniocha North, Delta State, Nigeria, was conducted between December 1999 and September 2000. Volunteers were screened for eye lesions and onchocerciasis. Microfilariae were found in the skin tissues of 134 (41.1%) inhabitants; of these, males had greater microfiladermia (49.9%) than females (33.3%). The percentage prevalence of the clini...

Data regarding cross-reactions against Trichinella spiralis in humans are scarce and controversial. For this reason, we tested serum samples from patients with typhoid fever, brucellosis, toxoplasmosis, amoebiasis, cysticercosis, trichocephaliasis, ascariasis, and onchocerciasis against an antigenic extract of T. spiralis infective larvae in an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and an e...