I'm just totally amazed. I mean, I have found information about this parasite from reading research papers. But the CDC just doesn't have any internet accessible content about it ... just blows my mind!
Is it because there are not a lot of cases of human infection with this parasite to make it onto the books? Or perhaps most of these parasites are not zoonotic to humans? (I'm not sure at this point.)
Also if you know anything about this genus then please tell me anything interesting. Of the nematode parasites belonging to this genus it appears that the most common one is Pterygodermatites peromysci. It appears to be host specific, infects the intestine primarily. Field tests indicated that the adult worms are approximately 18 - 38mm long, and they lay a lot of eggs (~ 237,000 eggs)! which is pretty large considering that the body average body lengths of the mice (Peromyscus leucopus) they tested were ~ 90 mm.
So if the CDC doesn't have any information about this parasite, then does any health organization?
- Maybe it's because nowdays there's not many researches about its zoonotic potencial. Besides, CDC is an American Company and its focus is on health of USA's people. In North America there's not the culture of eating insects (intermediate host). So, Pterygodermatites can't be an helmint of medical or epidemiological importance to the CDC currently.
- I never have seen papers with these sizes for Pterygodermatites. I work with this genus of bats in Brazil. My specimens and all papers that I have found about this genus describes about 12 mm or less.
Thank you, Érica. When I piece everything together it makes a lot of sense that humans in North America wouldn't get infected with this parasite. Anyway, Pterygodermatites peromysci in the white-footed mouse (Peromyscus Leucopus) was documented to be 38 mm in size in the following research paper:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020751909001696
I suppose that there is some diversity in size with respect to mouse infections. It has been noted to be ~ 18 mm in size in some other papers so I suppose it depends on geographical distribution and stuff like competitive endo-parasitism.
I have looked through the literature considerably, so I am aware that there is a scanning electron microscopy image of the Pterygodermatites species that infects bats, but I'm confident that there is no scanning electron microscopy image of the adult Pterygodermatites species that infects the the white-footed mouse.
Thank you for your tips, Adron. I hope I can post my results about Pterygodermatites of bats in Researchgate soon.
Hey Erica,
I thought I would let you know that I got around to writing a Wikipedia article about Pterygodermaties peromysci. Essentially, I wrote a basic summary of the primary information that I found from the scientific literature. My parasitology instructor has given me positive feedback on the article. If you look through the major revisions, you can see that I wrote it. Some users later added some hyper-links to other articles as I couldn't figure out how to do that myself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterygodermatites_peromysci
It could be due to the fact that they have never faced the problem. People generally focus on the problems in the immediate surroundings not on literature.
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