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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Helminth-Trematode: Echinostoma

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The term, echinostomes, includes those digeneans belonging to the family Echinostomatidae. Echinostomes are a rather heterogeneous group of cosmopolitan hermaphroditic digeneans that inhabit, as adults, the intestine of a great spectrum of vertebrate hosts, such as birds, mammals and, occasionally, reptiles and fishes. They can also parasitize humans causing the food-borne infection called echinostomiasis. The definitive hosts become infected after ingestion of the second intermediate host harboring the encysted metacercariae. Clinical symptoms of echinostomiasis include abdominal pain, violent watery diarrhea, and anorexia. The disease occurs focally and transmission is linked to fresh or brackish water habitats. Infections are associated with common sociocultural practices of eating raw or insufficiently cooked mollusks, fish, crustaceans, and amphibians. Echinostomiasis is aggravated by socioeconomic factors such as poverty, and is mainly prevalent in poor, rural areas. In this article, the authors also review the main features of these trematodes with emphasis on their food-borne transmission and control.