Experimental Ascaris suum infection in the pig: worm population kinetics following single inoculations with three doses of infective eggs

Abstract

To study population kinetics during primary Ascaris suum infections, 3 groups of 52 pigs each were inoculated with 100, 1000, or 10000 infective eggs. In all groups, the majority of larvae was found in the liver on day 3 post inoculation (p.i.) and in the lungs on day 7 p.i. Liver white spots, caused by migrating larvae, were most numerous at day 7 p.i., whereafter they gradually healed, and only low numbers of granulation-tissue type white spots and lymphonodular white spots persisted at days 21–56 p.i. Independent of dose level, 47–58% of the inoculated eggs were recovered as larvae in the small intestine on day 10 p.i., but most larvae were eliminated at days 17–21 p.i. This elimination started earlier and removed a higher percentage of the worms with increasing inoculation dose, resulting in small strongly aggregated worm populations by day 28 p.i. (k of the negative binomial distribution was low: 0·2–0·4) without significant differences between groups. Thus, overdispersion, which is a characteristic of both porcine and human ascarosis, is found here under experimental conditions where aggregation factors like host behaviour, transmission rate, host status etc have been partly or totally controlled.