A simple and inexpensive in vitro method for retrieving fertilized Toxocara canis eggs

The erratic migration of nematode larvae is potentially deleterious for humans, especially those produced by Toxocara roundworms. Diagnosis of human toxocariosis: visceral larva migrans depends on antibody detection against excretions-secretions (E/S) from Toxocara larvae by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. In the present work, we wish to propose a simple and cheap culture procedure for keeping T. canis female worms alive. We removed living worms from the small intestine of euthanized puppies at the Canine Control Centre "Culhuacan" in the Southern part of Mexico City. To ascertain the utility of the method, we compared the population size of fertilized eggs from both female worms kept in culture (FCM) and those obtained using uterus excision method (UEM). Operationally, a fertilized egg develops a larva after 1 month. Our results show that the culture method was superior at a ratio of 3:1 over UEM. FCM had advantages over UEM, such as (1) low probability of contamination with foreign antigens, (2) greater safety for infective egg manipulation, and (3) gave rise to a higher percentage of fertile eggs.