overall 10389 snails were collected from four study areas of punjab from november 2005 to october2006. the highest prevalence (38%) was found for indoplanorbis followed by physa (17%), bellamaya(10.3%), gyraulus (10%), lymnaea (9.2%), oncomelania (9%) and the lowest was found for bulinus (6.7%).only indoplanorbis snails were found to be positive for schistosoma bovis cercaria. correlation betwe...

Abstract Schistosomiasis is a water-based neglected tropical disease that prevalent in over 78 countries. It affects communities are reliant on freshwater bodies contaminated with schistosome cercariae for their daily water activities. Whilst treatment the drug praziquantel relatively effective, it does not prevent reinfection. One option reducing schistosomiasis infection providing at-risk tre...

BACKGROUND Schistosomiasis japonica remains a major public health problem in China. Its pathogen, Schistosoma japonicum has a complex life cycle and a unique repertoire of genes expressed at different life cycle stages. Exploring schistosome gene regulation will yield the best prospects for new drug targets and vaccine candidates. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a highly conserved class of noncoding RNA...

Schistosoma spindale (Montgomery, 1906) has never been reported in Thailand, since this worm was discovered by Montgomery (1906) in two plain cattle (Bos indices) at Muktesar in India. Liston and Soparkar (1918) completed its life cycle in the goat infected with one kind of furcocercous cercariae obtained from a fresh water snail, Planorbis exustus (synonym of Indoplanorbis exustus). In 1960 an...

Schistosomiasis is a debilitating disease that affects over 240 million people worldwide and is considered the most important neglected tropical disease following malaria. Free-swimming freshwater cercariae, one of the six morphologically distinct schistosome life stages, infect humans by directly penetrating through the skin. Cercariae identify and seek the host by sensing chemicals released f...

BACKGROUND The infective schistosome cercaria develops within the intramolluscan daughter sporocyst from an undifferentiated germ ball, during which synthesis of proteins essential for infection occurs. When the aquatic cercaria locates the mammalian host it rapidly penetrates into the epidermis using glandular secretions. It then undergoes metamorphosis into the schistosomulum, including repla...

Septins are a family of eukaryotic GTP binding proteins conserved from yeasts to humans. Originally identified in mutants of budding yeast, septins participate in diverse cellular functions including cytokinesis, organization of actin networks, cell polarity, vesicle trafficking and many others. Septins assemble into heteroligomers to form filaments and rings. Here, four septins of Schistosoma ...

BACKGROUND  Schistosomiasis elicits cross-regulatory immune responses, but it is unclear how antihelminthic treatment affects this balance. This study integrates data on 13 cytokines elicited by 3 schistosome to examine how praziquantel treatment alters immune polarization and whether post-treatment cytokine profiles influence reinfection status. METHODS  Venous blood from 72 Schistosoma haem...

The prospects confronting a ‘‘new-born’’ schistosome cercaria are formidable. That some of these microscopic helminths successfully negotiate the tortuous route from snail to human vasculature is a truly remarkable feature of adaptive biology. After escaping the birth pore of its parental sporocyst, a cercaria (at least we infer from studies of other digeneans [1]) swims and crawls through the ...

Schistosomiasis is a global health problem caused by several species of schistosome blood flukes. The initial stage of infection is invasion of human skin by a multicellular larva, the cercaria. We identified proteins released by cercariae when they are experimentally induced to exhibit invasive behavior. Comparison of the proteome obtained from skin lipid-induced cercariae (the natural activat...