Department of Parasitology, Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana.
Environment and Genetics Department, School of Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.
PLoS One. 2024 Jun 7;19(6):e0295089. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0295089. eCollection 2024.
Mansonella spp. have been reported to have a wide global distribution. Despite the distribution and co-occurrence with other filarial parasites like Wuchereria bancrofti, Onchocerca volvulus and Loa loa, it is given little attention. There are few surveillance programmes for assessing the distribution of mansonellosis, due to the associated mild to no symptoms experienced by infected people. However, addressing this infection is critical to the onchocerciasis control program as current rapid diagnostic tools targeting O. volvulus have the tendency to cross react with Mansonella species. In this study we identified and characterised M. perstans from five sites in two districts in the Volta Region of Ghana and compared them to samples from other regions. Night blood smears and filter blood blots were obtained from individuals as part of a study on lymphatic filariasis. The Giemsa-stained smears were screened by microscopy for the presence of filarial parasites. Genomic DNA was extracted from blood blots from 39 individuals that were positive for M. perstans and Nested PCR targeting the internal spacer 1 (ITS-1) was conducted. Of these, 30 were sequenced and 24 sequences were kept for further analysis. Phylogenetic analysis of 194 nucleotide positions showed no differences in the samples collected. The similarities suggests that there could be one species in this area. However, more robust studies with larger sample sizes are required to draw such conclusions. We also observed a clustering of the samples from Ghana with reference sequences from Africa and Brazil, suggesting they could be related. This study draws further attention to a neglected infection, presents the first characterisation of M. perstans in Ghana and calls for more population-based studies across different geographical zones to ascertain species variations and disease distribution.
曼森线虫属已被报道在全球范围内广泛分布。尽管与其他丝虫寄生虫如班氏吴策线虫、盘尾丝虫和罗阿丝虫共存，但它们受到的关注很少。由于感染人群所经历的症状轻微或无，因此很少有监测方案来评估曼森线虫病的分布。然而，解决这种感染对于盘尾丝虫病控制计划至关重要，因为目前针对盘尾丝虫的快速诊断工具往往与曼森线虫属发生交叉反应。在这项研究中，我们从加纳沃尔塔地区的两个区的五个地点鉴定和描述了曼森线虫属，并将其与来自其他地区的样本进行了比较。夜血涂片和滤器血斑是从感染淋巴丝虫病的个体中获得的。吉姆萨染色的涂片通过显微镜检查是否存在丝虫寄生虫。从 39 名曼森线虫属阳性的个体的血斑中提取基因组 DNA，并进行针对内部间隔 1（ITS-1）的巢式 PCR。其中，有 30 个被测序，24 个序列用于进一步分析。对 194 个核苷酸位置的系统发育分析表明，所收集的样本没有差异。这种相似性表明该地区可能只有一个物种。然而，需要进行更多的、更大样本量的稳健研究来得出这样的结论。我们还观察到来自加纳的样本与来自非洲和巴西的参考序列聚类，这表明它们可能有关联。这项研究进一步引起了对一种被忽视的感染的关注，介绍了加纳曼森线虫属的首次特征描述，并呼吁在不同地理区域进行更多的基于人群的研究，以确定物种变异和疾病分布。
