Echinostoma

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Echinostoma
two specimens of Echinostoma revolutum
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Platyhelminthes
Class: Trematoda
Order: Echinostomida
Suborder: Echinostomata
Family: Echinostomatidae
Genus: Echinostoma
Rudolphi, 1809[1]
Species
  • Echinostoma caproni
  • Echinostoma echinatum
  • Echinostoma friedi
  • Echinostoma hortense
  • Echinostoma ilocanum
  • Echinostoma jurini
  • Echinostoma luisyrei
  • Echinostoma miyagawai
  • Echinostoma paraensei
  • Echinostoma parvocirris
  • Echinostoma revolutum
  • Echinostoma trivolvis

Echinostoma is an important genus that includes many parasites.

Human echinostomiasis is an intestinal parasitic disease caused by one of at least sixteen trematode flukes from the genus Echinostoma. Found largely in southeast Asia and the Far East, mainly in cosmopolitan areas. It has extensive vitelline glands for egg yolk production and tandem, oval testes. Echinostomiasis is transmitted through the ingestion of one of several possible intermediate hosts, which could include snails or other mollusks, certain freshwater fish, crustaceans or amphibians. These flukes are of moderate size, about 2 mm, and are distinguished by an oral sucker surrounded by a characteristic collar of spines.

Adults are in the small intestines of vertebrate definitive hosts. Eggs are released through the feces and embryonated. The egg becomes a miracidium with an operculum, which penetrates a snail, the first intermediate host. Upon penetration, it becomes a mother sporocyst, producing many mother rediae. Each of these mother redia produce many daughter rediae, which each produce many free-swimming cercariae. Each of these cercaria encysts in a freshwater mollusc, the second intermediate host, becoming a metacercaria. These mollusc are eaten by a vertebrate, the definitive host.

Upon infection of the human host, the worms aggregate in the small intestine where they may cause no symptoms, mild symptoms, or severe symptoms in rare cases, depending on the number of worms present. Diarrhea is a result of heavy infections. Effective drugs for treatment do exist, but the disease still remains a problem in endemic areas.

Prevention and control is possible through measures such as health education; altered eating habits to exclude ingestion of raw fish, mollusks and other sources of the disease; and removing of wastewater and industrial discharge that may be home to the parasite.

See also

  • List of parasites (human)

References

  1. ↑ Rudolphi K. (1809). Entoz. Hist. Nat. 2(1): 38.
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