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Genetic diversity and structure of Schistosoma japonicum within two marshland villages of Anhui, China, prior to schistosome transmission control and elimination

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Abstract

Schistosomiasis is caused by the genus Schistosoma and affected more than 250 million people worldwide. Schistosoma japonicum was once seriously endemic in China and nearly 60 years of efforts has seen great success in disease control. However, due to its zoonotic nature and complex life cycle, the schistosomiasis transmission control and final elimination would require, besides an intersectoral approach, deep understanding of population genetics of the parasite. We therefore performed a snail survey in two marshland villages of Anhui province of China and collected S. japonicum cercariae from infected snails. By using the recent developed microsatellite panel comprising seven loci, we genotyped the sampled parasites and analyzed the population genetic diversity and structure. The results showed much lower infection prevalence of S. japonicum in snails and low infected snail density in either marshland village. Through population genetic analyses, a considerable genetic diversity of parasites was revealed, whereas a small number of clusters were inferred and the sign of bottleneck effect was detected in each village. For the first time in S. japonicum in two villages, we provided estimates of effective population sizes with two different approaches. The results indicated that the parasite in two villages could eventually be eradicated with the ongoing integral control measures, but with potential risk of reinvasion of immigrant parasites through the Yangtze River. Such would be of great importance in assessment of the effects of ongoing control measures and prediction of the transmission capability for S. japonicum, thus guiding decisions on the choice of further control work.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation of China (No. 81273141).

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Epidemiology and Statistics, School of Public Health, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, China

      Huan Ding, Da-Bing Lu, Yu-Meng Gao & Yao Deng

    2. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Preventive and Translational Medicine for Geriatric Diseases, School of Public Health, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, People’s Republic of China

      Huan Ding, Da-Bing Lu, Yu-Meng Gao & Yao Deng

    3. School of Biology and Basic Medical Sciences, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, China

      Ying Li

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    1. Huan Ding
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    Correspondence to Da-Bing Lu.

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    Huan Ding and Da-Bing Lu contributed equally to this work.

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    Admixture analyses of S. japonicum cercariae with the software Baps3. (PDF 105 kb)

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    Ding, H., Lu, DB., Gao, YM. et al. Genetic diversity and structure of Schistosoma japonicum within two marshland villages of Anhui, China, prior to schistosome transmission control and elimination. Parasitol Res 116, 569–576 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-016-5321-x

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