2022-06-27

Cystic echinococcosis (CE) is a helminthic zoonotic disease that affects various body organs, primarily the liver and then the lungs. This disease is caused by the tapeworm of genus Echinococcus (family Taeniidae) which is endemic in most regions of the world (Armua-Fernandez et al. 2014, Romig et al. 2015; Karamian et al. 2017). As the intermediate hosts ingest the eggs, they develop into a fluid-filled cysts (Cardona and Carmena 2013; Rojas et al. 2014). The parasite needs two hosts to complete its life cycle. These hosts are the definitive host which are carnivores of the family Canidae and the second host is the intermediate host that includes many ruminants such as sheep, goats, cattle, camel etc. (Romig and Deplazes 2017). The adult worm lives in the small intestine of canids, mostly dogs and wolves (Karamian et al. 2017, Chaudhari et al. 2017; Mulinge et al. 2018). The adults produce eggs that pass with the feces of dogs and contaminate water, vegetables, fruits, etc. (Paniker and Ghosh 2013; OteroAbad and Torgerson 2013). When ingested by the intermediate hosts, eggs hatch releasing the hexacanth embryo. These are then carried by the blood to various body organs where they develop into cysts characterized by long-term growth in the intermediate hosts (Deplazes et al. 2017).

2022-06-27

Cryptosporidiosis is considered as a major zoonotic infection caused by protozoan parasite, with public health and economic impacts on humans and animal health, since it infects humans and a wide variety of animal species. Cryptosporidiosis is caused by an intracellular apicomplexan protozoan parasite belonging to different species of Cryptosporidium. About 23 species of Cryptosporidium have been identified from human and other vertebrates including domestic animals with different degree of pathogenicity ranging from asymptomatic to severe gastrointestinal disorder (Ryan and Hijjawi 2015). This parasite has a direct monoxenous life cycle (sexual and asexual stages), which is completed within a single host, usually an herbivore animal (Leitch and He 2012).

2022-06-27

Fascioliasis is considered as a neglected zoonotic disease of ruminants. This disease is caused by two species of Fasciola (F.) namely Fasciola hepatica and F. gigantica. They are distributed in more than 70 countries except Antarctica, in areas where sheep and cattle are reared (WHO 2016; CDC 2019). This disease was first recorded as early as 2000 BC. Fasciola spp. cause serious pathological effects to livestock (Abbas et al. 2019). The number of infected sheep exceeds 250 million and about 300 million cattle are infected globally with fascioliasis. The disease cause losses exceeding 3.2 billion $ yearly, due to decrease in milk and meat production and an increase in mortality rate in addition to liver condemnation and expenditure of anthelminthic (Hillyer and Apt 1997; Jaja et al. 2017).