Abstract
The incidence of human infection with the broad tapeworm Diphyllobothrium nihonkaiense has been increasing in urban areas of Japan and in European countries. D. nihonkaiense is morphologically similar to but genetically distinct from D. latum and exploits anadromous wild Pacific salmon as its second intermediate host. Clinical signs in humans include diarrhea and discharge of the strobila, which can be as long as 12 m. The natural life history and the geographic range of the tapeworm remain to be elucidated, but recent studies have indicated that the brown bear in the northern territories of the Pacific coast region is its natural final host. A recent surge of clinical cases highlights a change in the epidemiologic trend of this tapeworm disease from one of rural populations to a disease of urban populations worldwide who eat seafood as part of a healthy diet.
Highlights
The incidence of human infection with the broad tapeworm Diphyllobothrium nihonkaiense has been increasing in urban areas of Japan and in European countries
By the mid-19th century, infection with the Japanese broad tapeworm was known to be contracted by eating salmon (Figure 1) and was considered to be infection with D. latum until 1986, when Yamane et al revised the identification of the Japanese broad tapeworm and established the new species D. nihonkaiense [1]
Clinical cases caused by D. nihonkaiense have been emerging even in European countries [6,7,8,9], suggesting that the globalization of this tapeworm disease is probably due to the worldwide expansion of commercial sales of fresh or frozen wild Pacific salmon
Summary
The incidence of human infection with the broad tapeworm Diphyllobothrium nihonkaiense has been increasing in urban areas of Japan and in European countries. A recent surge of clinical cases highlights a change in the epidemiologic trend of this tapeworm disease from one of rural populations to a disease of urban populations worldwide who eat seafood as part of a healthy diet Broad tapeworms such as Diphyllobothrium latum and D. nihonkaiense are exotic parasites that grow as long as 12 meters in the small intestine. We retrospectively examined annual case numbers of diphyllobothriasis nihonkaiense in 2 institutes; the Department of Medical Zoology of the Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine in Kyoto (MZ) and the Department of Infectious Diseases of the Tokyo Metropolitan Bokutoh Hospital (BH) in Tokyo. BH is one of the major public hospitals in metropolitan Tokyo
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