Familiar snails are also intermediate hosts for pathogenic digenean flukes

Abstract

Digenean flukes are endoparasites of vertebrates and some fluke species have enormous medical and veterinary importance due to their pathogenicity for humans, livestock, companion animals and wildlife. Most of the digenean flukes need gastropod snails as intermediate hosts in their life cycle. The snail species occurring even across human environments also act as intermediate host of pathogenetic digenean flukes. However, parasitological studies usually focus on only the flukes and epidemiological studies using the snail hosts are unpopular after uncovering life cycles, vector-species and treatment methods of the flukes. For epidemiology of fluke infections, the integrated understanding on the relationship between flukes and their intermediate host snails is necessary. This review introduces the recent studies on the relationship between pathogenetic digenean species and their intermediate host snails, and newly discovered problems in the future