Detection of European Strain of <i>Echinococcus multilocularis</i> in North America
Bibliographic record
Abstract
To the Editor: In 2009, an alveolar hydatid cyst, the intermediate stage of the cestode Echinococcus multilocularis, was detected in the liver of a dog from Quesnel, British Columbia (BC), Canada, 600 km west of the nearest known record of this parasite in central North America. Alveolar hydatid cysts normally occur in rodent intermediate hosts. However, humans can serve as aberrant intermediate hosts; cysts generally originate in the liver and, in about one third of cases, metastasize throughout the body. Detection of the larval stage of this pathogen in an unusual host in a new geographic region required application of multiple molecular epidemiologic techniques to determine if this was range expansion of a native strain or introduction of a new strain of veterinary and public health concern. The possible establishment of a European strain in North American wildlife, with spillover into domestic dogs, may have implications for public health and require increased vigilance by medical and veterinary personnel in the newly endemic region. Compared with native North American strains, European strains of E. multilocularis appear to have greater potential to cause alveolar hydatid disease (AHD) in humans. These strains are emerging worldwide (increasing in both prevalence and distribution) as a result of changes in landscape, climate, and wildlife–human interfaces. In Europe, human AHD can be fatal (definite or probable cause of death in 23.5% of 119 recent cases) and has low cure rates (5% of 408 recent cases). As of 2000, in Europe and Asia, the estimated cost per case of AHD was US $100,000–$300,000. Therefore, better understanding of the distribution, genetic diversity, and pathogenicity of strains of E. multilocularis is needed to assess risks and mitigate costs for public and veterinary health, as well as to provide evidence for the regulation and screening of imported domestic animals and translocated wildlife.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".