Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 18, 2025
Isolation And Dendritic Cell-Uptake of Small Extracellular Vesicles from Echinococcus granulosus
Published on: March 28, 2025
EmsB Microsatellite Analysis of Echinococcus multilocularis Specimens Isolated from Belgian Patients with Alveolar
Sabrina Egrek1,2, Jenny Knapp3,4, Rosalie Sacheli1,2
1Department of Clinical Microbiology-Belgian National Reference Laboratory for Echinococcosis, Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Medicines (CIRM), University Hospital of Liege, 4000 Liege, Belgium.
Abstract:
Alveolar echinococcosis (AE), caused by Echinococcus multilocularis (E. multilocularis), is a severe parasitic zoonosis that is potentially fatal for humans. The parasite is primarily transmitted by wildlife, with red foxes acting as definitive hosts and rodents as intermediate hosts, while humans can become accidental but dead-end hosts. The aim of this study is to use EmsB typing on E. multilocularis isolates from human AE cases and local animals such as foxes and rodents. In this study, retrospective EmsB typing was performed on 39 samples, including 11 tissue samples from 10 patients, 18 fecal swabs from foxes, and 10 tissue samples from rodents. A dendrogram was created to determine the EmsB profiles present. The results showed that all the rodent samples were associated with the EmsB P1 profile (10/10), while the human and fox samples shared the EmsB profile P1 (5/11 humans and 8/18 foxes), a profile near P4 (2/11 humans and 3 foxes), and a profile near P8 (1/11 humans and 1/18 foxes). The study demonstrates that the same EmsB profiles circulate among humans and animals, confirming that wildlife reservoirs play a key role in transmission.
