Molecular epidemiology and diagnostics for Echinococcus multilocularis in canid definitive and intermediate hosts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Echinococcus multilocularis shed by canid definitive hosts causes alveolar echinococcosis (AE) in rodent intermediate hosts as well as human and dog aberrant hosts. AE is debilitating in humans and dogs, resulting in serious health challenges and expenses for both veterinary and public health. This thesis addresses needs to improve molecular and serological diagnostics for E. multilocularis in wild canids and dogs. I adapted and evaluated an in-house copro-qPCR-MCA which has comparable diagnostic sensitivity and specificity with the ‘gold standard’ adult cestode recovery, and superior diagnostic sensitivity (92% vs 39%) when compared to conventional fecal flotation techniques. I demonstrated E. multilocularis prevalence of 72% in coyotes in Saskatchewan, a highly endemic region, and using the copro-qPCR-MCA, 17% in coyotes from a newly endemic and highly populated area of British Colombia, and 10% in foxes from islands in the western Canadian Arctic. I also demonstrated parasite stage specificity of the Em95 antigen for serological diagnosis of canine AE in coyotes with intestinal infections, suggesting that serology for the Em95 antigen is likely to be an excellent tool for detecting cases of AE in dogs in North America, where this disease is increasingly described. My thesis also described 27 cases of canine AE from western Canada, highlighting important clinical, epidemiological, and economic information for veterinary practitioners and dog owners and indicating that dogs with AE may serve as indicators of parasite range expansion and risk to humans. Finally, molecular epidemiology revealed that the haplotypes present in intestines of wild canids and AE cases in dogs and humans in prairie regions of western Canada are highly pathogenic and zoonotic European strains, compared to the N2 strain previously described in central North America. In the western Canadian Arctic, my thesis reports, for the first time, that the established haplotype of E. multilocularis is N1 North American Arctic strain, and not Asian strains reported from the west coast of Alaska, nor the N2 or European strains established in populated regions of southern Canada. Therefore, the Canadian Arctic remains vulnerable to introduction of Asian and European strains with higher zoonotic potential. This thesis provides useful diagnostic tools for large scale prevalence studies of E. multilocularis in canids, as well as data on the molecular epidemiology and prevalence which can guide the formulation of control and prevention policies.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
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".