Research Projects

Foodborne trematodiases (FBTs) are endemic in many regions of the world, affecting at least 40 million people and costing more than 2 million life years due to disability and death (WHO, 2018). Among the various food-borne trematodes, Artyfechinostomum sufrartyfex (Lane, 1915) and Fasciolopsis buski (Busk, 1843) are two medico-veterinary significant yet underappreciated zoonotic parasites. Echinostomiasis due to A. sufrartyfex and fasciolopsiasis due to F. buski are rising as public health concerns in India, particularly in rural regions. In recent years, we have reported A. sufrartyfex infection in children in North Bihar, producing severe diarrhoea, malnourishment, and anaemia in the affected children. A few deaths have also been recorded among the affected population (Prasad et al., 2019). Furthermore, we had also reported F. buski infection in children among the same population (Saikia et al., 2022). And very recently, the parasite was also reported from a 4-year-old girl from Guwahati, Assam (Deka et al., 2022). Besides, a considerable number of F. buski infection cases have been documented from various parts of the country (Ballal and Martena, 2012; Su et al., 2014; Achra et al., 2015; Ranjan et al., 2017). To add to the burden, these parasites have been found in both domestic and wild animals, such as pigs, rodents, mongoose etc. and may be a significant source of infection to humans. Though human and animal infections by A. sufrartyfex and F. buski are recurrently reported in the country, proper surveillance mechanism and economic impact assessment of the diseases is still lacking. This can be attributed more specifically to lack of appropriate diagnostic tools to detect these infections. Excretory secretory proteins (ESPs/ secretome) of parasites are known to be important mediators of parasite-host interaction and a potent source of diagnostic antigens for early detection of parasitic diseases. Recent proteomic studies on the ESPs of several helminth parasites have yielded a number of such diagnostic indicators for early detection (Ditgen et al., 2014; Mokhtarian et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2018; Logan et al., 2020; Huson et al., 2021). Aside from the soluble ESPs, the recent discovery of extracellular vesicles in helminth parasite secretions have opened up new opportunities in the development of diagnostics and therapies. Subsequently, growing number of studies have led to identification of important drug, diagnostic and vaccine targets against several helminth parasites (Quintana et al., 2016; Mekonnen et al., 2018; Hansen et al., 2019; Chen et al., 2020; Kifle et al., 2020; Kuipers et al., 2022). The proposed study is likewise aimed at characterizing the secretome (both extracellular vesicular and soluble proteins) of A. sufrartyfex and F. buski from humans and pigs in order to identify unique immunodiagnostic markers.