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The dynamics of infection of horses with the trematode Schistosoma turkestanicum Skrjabin, 1913 in Karakalpakstan was studied. We carried out scientific research in various regions of the Republic of Karakalpakstan in 2016–2020. When determining the infection of horses with trematodes in the districts of Karakalpakstan, we used methods of complete and incomplete helminthological dissection by K. I. Skriabin (1928). A total of 143 horses were examined by the complete dissection method. The article presents the results of studies carried out on the territory of the Republic of Karakalpakstan. Helminths were found in all 143 horses examined during the study. The trematode Schistosoma turkestanicum Skrjabin, 1913 was among the identified helminths, which is very common in this region. The parasitic worms Schistosoma turkestanicum were found to belong to the Plathelminthes type, the Trematoda class. The study results indicate that the simultaneous presence of mixed (associative) invasions by trematodes was observed in horses. It was established that trematodes found in horses parasitize on blood vessels of the bile ducts, gallbladder, liver and intestinal mesentery. The prevalence of the trematode Schistosoma turkestanicum in horses was 18.8%, and the intensity of invasion was 3876–12538 specimens. The trematode Schistosoma turkestanicum, depending on the development cycle, develops in the presence of an intermediate host. Freshwater mollusks Lymnaea auricularia, belonging to the family Lymnaeidae perform the function of an intermediate host.

The purpose of the research is to study of the morphological and biological characteristics of parthenogenetic and dioecious generations of the trematode Schistosoma turkestaniсum – a parasite of mammals of Uzbekistan.Materials and methods. Populations of mature trematodes from animals and mollusks Lymnaea auricularia from different types of water bodies of Uzbekistan were collected and studied. Experimentally reproduced the development of trematodes in the body of the intermediate and definitive hosts according to generally accepted methods.Results and discussion.The morphological and biological features of all phases of the development of Sch. turkestanicum under experimental conditions. Some new data on the morphology of the parasite having taxonomic meanings and the distribution of Sch. turkestanicum in Uzbekistan.

Several trematodes that parasitize vertebrate animals utilize swimming aquatic larvae to infect the host percutaneously. The most important ones among these parasites are the blood-flukes of birds and mammals comprising species that are also zoonotic. Within this latter group are species that cause the bilharziasis or schistosomiasis of inhabitants of the tropical countries, and other trematode species that are able to penetrate human skin, but do not develop to an adult form of the worm in the body. In temperate climates this latter type of infection occurs mainly in the form of an unpleasant inflammation of the skin and is often called “swimmer’s itch”. In most of these cases, the origin of the larvae remains unexplored, the source of the infection is neglected by the medical or veterinarian practitioners. Herein we report for the first time in Hungary that the cause of such dermatitis was the cercariae of Schistosoma turkestanicum, which infected red deer (Cervus elaphus) in this country. The local name of this pristine disease is “water mange” and it occurs only in one of the floodplains of the Danube. On the basis of informal communication this symptom seems to be rather regular among people who do fishing or have a bath in the habitat of the blood-fluke. In the case of adequate anamnesis it is worth examining the origin of the cercarial dermatitis which may give cross-reactions with human schistosomiasis during serological tests. Orv. Hetil., 2016, 157(40), 1579–1586.

Background Schistosoma turkestanicum is a parasite of considerable veterinary importance as an agent of animal schistosomiasis in many countries, including China. The S. turkestanicum cercariae can also infect humans, causing cercarial dermatitis in many countries and regions of the world. In spite of its significance as a pathogen of animals and humans, there is little transcriptomic and genomic data in the public databases. Methods Herein, we performed the transcriptome Illumina RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) of adult males and females of S. turkestanicum and de novo transcriptome assembly. Results Approximately 81.1 (female) and 80.5 (male) million high-quality clean reads were obtained and then 29,526 (female) and 41,346 (male) unigenes were assembled. A total of 34,624 unigenes were produced from S. turkestanicum females and males, with an average length of 878 nucleotides (nt) and N50 of 1480 nt. Of these unigenes, 25,158 (72.7 %) were annotated by blast searches against the NCBI non-redundant protein database. Among these, 21,995 (63.5 %), 22,189 (64.1 %) and 13,754 (39.7 %) of the unigenes had significant similarity in the NCBI non-redundant protein (NR), non-redundant nucleotide (NT) and Swiss-Prot databases, respectively. In addition, 3150 unigenes were identified to be expressed specifically in females and 1014 unigenes were identified to be expressed specifically in males. Interestingly, several pathways associated with gonadal development and sex maintenance were found, including the Wnt signaling pathway (103; 2 %) and progesterone-mediated oocyte maturation (77; 1.5 %). Conclusions The present study characterized and compared the transcriptomes of adult female and male blood fluke, S. turkestanicum. These results will not only serve as valuable resources for future functional genomics studies to understand the molecular aspects of S. turkestanicum, but also will provide essential information for ongoing whole genome sequencing efforts on this pathogenic blood fluke.