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Human abdominal angiostrongyliasis is a potentially fatal disease caused by Angiostrongylus costaricensis, a nematode found in the Americas. During the period of December 1994 through August 1995, an outbreak of this disease occurred in Guatemala. We identified 22 cases of abdominal angiostrongyliasis and conducted a matched case-control study to identify risk factors for illness. The median age of the 18 cases enrolled in the study was 37 years (range, 9-68 years), and 11 (61.1%) were male. Consumption of the following six raw food items was associated with angiostrongyliasis: mint (odds ratio [OR], 6.9; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.5-66.0), shrimp (OR, infinite; 95% CI, 1.4 to infinite), and four kinds of ceviche that reportedly contained raw mint (OR for consumption of mint or ceviche that contained mint, 7.0; 95% CI, 1.0-315). We conclude that raw mint was the likely vehicle of infection for this outbreak. To our knowledge, this is the first reported outbreak of abdominal angiostrongyliasis and the first time that a specific food item has been epidemiologically linked to the disease.

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Third-stage metastrongyle larvae were recovered from slugs (Vaginulus sp.) collected in Santa Lucia, Ecuador, a town about 40 miles north of Guayaquil. Some of the larvae were inoculated into laboratory-bred cotton rats and adults of Angiostrongylus costaricensis were later recovered. This is the first report of this parasite in Ecuador.

Angiostrongylus costaricensis is the aetiological agent of human abdominal angiostrongyliasis, a parasitic disease reported from the United States to Argentina, with a widespread occurrence of the nematode throughout Central and South America. This study assesses the performance of A. costaricensis eggs as antigen in an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), for the determination of parasite-specific IgG1 antibodies. The specificity and the sensitivity of the method were 87% and 90.5%, respectively. Through this test it was possible to demonstrate a sharp and early decline in IgG1 antibody in serum samples taken from patients with histopathological diagnosis of abdominal angiostrongyliasis at different time points after surgical treatment. The present work demonstrated the usefulness of the egg antigen in the development of a specific diagnostic test for abdominal angiostrongylosis.