Twenty-four distinct outbreaks of probable chikungunya (CHIK) etiology were identified throughout Indonesia from September 2001 to March 2003, after a near 20-year hiatus of epidemic CHIK activity in the country. Thirteen outbreak reports were based on clinical observations alone, and 11 confirmed by serological/virological methods. Detailed epidemiological profiles of two investigated outbreaks in Bogor and Bekasi are presented. Human sera were screened using an ELISA for IgM and IgG anti-CHIK antibodies. Additionally, reverse transcriptase PCR and virus isolation were attempted for virus identification. The mean age of cases was 37 +/- 18 years in Bogor and 33 +/- 20 years in Bekasi. There was no outstanding case-clustering, although outbreak-affected households were observed to be geographically grouped within villages. The attack rates in Bogor and Bekasi were 2.8/1000 and 6.7/1000 inhabitants respectively. Both outbreaks started in the rainy season following increased Aedes aegypti and A. albopictus densities.

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Marshall Lightowlers and colleagues (Int J Parasitol 2003; 33: 1207-17) recently demonstrated that recombinant oncosphere vaccines against several taeniid cestodes, including T ovis, T saginata, T solium, and Echinococcus granulosus, are highly effective. Protection was almost 100%, in the laboratory and in the field. These researchers found several common features, including a predicted secretory signal sequence, and one or two copies of a fibronectin type III domain, each encoded by separate exons within the associated gene. WHERE NEXT? Molecular and immunological techniques, including vaccine research and development of animal models for differentiation of taeniid species in humans, have greatly advanced over the past decade. The clinical importance of infections by these taeniids, including T asiatica, in humans, and the potential for cysticercosis attributable to T asiatica in humans, needs further study.

Neurocysticercosis (NCC), which is caused by accidental ingestion of eggs of the pork tapeworm, Taenia solium, was common in Bali, Indonesia until the early 1990s. However, improved education on hygiene and sanitation, a move to keeping pigs indoors, and improvement of economic and living conditions have substantially reduced the occurrence of NCC in Bali. Since 2011, T. solium tapeworm carriers (T. solium taeniasis) and heavily infected pigs and dogs have exclusively been detected from villages in mountainous regions of northeastern Bali where NCC and ocular cysticercosis (OCC) cases have also been identified. In response to this continued area of high infection, a one-day workshop was convened to discuss how to prevent and control this potentially lethal zoonotic parasitic infection in Bali. This review presents an overview of the current status of T. solium taeniasis and cysticercosis in Indonesia and proposes a strategy for the prevention and control of this zoonosis in Bali.

We compared the performance of loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) with that of a multiplex PCR method for differential detection of human Taenia parasites in fecal specimens from taeniasis patients. The LAMP method, with no false positives, showed a higher sensitivity (88.4%) than the multiplex PCR (37.2%). Thus, it is expected that the LAMP method has a high value for molecular diagnosis of taeniasis.Differential detection of Taenia species (Taenia saginata, T. asiatica, and T. solium) is a key point for control and prevention of taeniasis/cysticercosis in areas where Taenia disease is endemic. The identification of the carriers of T. solium tapeworms is most important for the prevention of cysticercosis, the most severe Taenia disease. Diagnosis of taeniasis by stool examination to detect taeniid eggs, the most common method, lacks both sensitivity and specificity because the eggs of Taenia species are morphologically indistinguishable. Moreover, Taenia species identification relying on comparative morphology of proglottids also lacks specificity.The coproantigen detection method has proved to be a useful application in epidemiological surveys (1, 5), but this method is genus specific, not species specific. Recently, a T. solium-specific coproantigen enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) has been developed and shown to be potentially useful for mass screening (4). However, this test fails to identify T. saginata and T. asiatica taeniasis patients. Therefore, molecular tools are more reliable for differential identifications of taeniid parasites. Several PCR technique-based detection methods for Taenia species in fecal samples, including the multiplex PCR method with mitochondrial DNA (18), the PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism method with mitochondrial DNA (15, 16), and the nested-PCR method with the Tso31 gene encoding the T. solium oncosphere-specific protein (10), have been reported. We have recently developed a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method targeting cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (cox1) and cathepsin L-like cysteine peptidase (clp) genes for differential detection of Taenia species (13). This method utilizes a Bst DNA polymerase with strand replacement activity and four primers that recognize six sequences on the target DNA under isothermal conditions. This method has proved to be simple and highly sensitive and specific for differential detection of Taenia species by using DNA prepared from proglottids, cysticerci, and fecal samples of taeniasis patients (12) without using sophisticated and expensive equipment. In the present study, we evaluated its sensitivity and specificity with fecal specimens from taeniasis patients by comparison of the results obtained by the LAMP method with those obtained by the multiplex PCR method.Thirty-six fecal samples were collected in China from 26 T. saginata taeniasis patients, 5 T. asiatica taeniasis patients, and 5 T. solium taeniasis patients, and 7 fecal samples from Indonesia were obtained from T. saginata taeniasis p...

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Three human taeniid species, Taenia solium, Taenia saginata and Taenia asiatica are distributed in Indonesia. A field survey conducted in Bali from 2002 to 2006 showed that the prevalence of taeniasis was highly variable among four districts (1.1-27.5%), and only two cysticercosis cases due to T. solium infection were detected. All tapeworms (n = 66) expelled from 66 tapeworm carriers were confirmed to be T. saginata by mitochondrial DNA analysis. A total prevalence of 13.0% (19/146) for T. solium taeniasis was found in Jayawijaya District,

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