Programme Onchocercoses shall be present, for the first time, at the Afrika-Festival in Tübingen, which takes place from Thursday, 17th to Sunday, 20th of July.
More information about the entire program on: –
and on: www.afrikafestival.net
With its high bio-climatic diversity, Cameroon harbours a large variety of bovine hosts and their respective parasites. Whilst our primary aim is to study the epidemiology of Onchocerca-parasites in cattle and men, we now enlarged our fous on other cattle parasites and diseases too: Tsetse flies and trypanosomes, ticks, piroplasmidae and Dermatophilus, Culicidae and Setaria, Ceratopogonidae and O. gutturosa. Microbacterial, fungus and virus diseases are very common at places where vectors are prevalent and susceptible hosts available. Beneath the Zebu cattle (Bos indicus), which itself belongs to different breeds (white and red Fulani, Mbororo, etc.) there are inbred Goudali Zebu at Wakwa (Zebu & Holstein & Braman), pure taurine species (Bos taurus; Namchi, Ndama) in the Poli mountains to the North-West and inbred Zebu-taurine local breeds: Kapsiki and others more or less mixed local species towards the Far North.
PhD Students from the University of Ngaoundéré, Msc. Babette Guimbang and Archile Paguem have started, with a grant from the Otto Bayer Fondation and with the support of Dr. Kingsley Manchang from IRAD and Dr. Mahmoudou from the Ngaoundéré University – both are very experienced veterinarians – to examine herds of cattle from different regions of North-Cameroon. More than 300 cattle have already been examined in the area around Ngaoundéré and a second sample of another 300 cattle has just been examined in the Dept. du Mayo Rey near Tcholliré.
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The results of this study shall enable us to deliminate the occurrence of Simulium– and Culicoides-transmitted boviner Onchocerca-species and assess their impact for the epidemiology of human onchocerciasis by zooprophylaxuis and crossreacting concomitant premunition (Dipl. biol. Albert Eisenbarth).
Sera and samples shall also be used for QTL-studies in order to link the genetic structure of the cattle hosts to their susceptability as regards the various endemic pathogens.
(Read more soon)
On June 5th, Julia Hildebrandt from the groupg of PD. Dr. Adrian Streit at the MPI in Tübingen sucessfully passed her rigorosum! She gave a lecture on the reproductive biology of Onchocerca ochengi and presented her results. She is the first to make her doctorate in our DFG-funded project here in Tübingen!
On this very same day, we also received the good news that her paper has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Veterinary Parasitology:
Reproductive biology of Onchocerca ochengi, a nodule forming filarial nematode in zebu cattle.
Julia C Hildebrandt; Albert Eisenbarth; Alfons Renz; Adrian Streit
During the last 10 years, the Simulium damnosum s.l. populations at the river Vina du Sud near Galim decreased considerably, as indicated by the declining biting rates on human fly-collectors. Yet the reason for this is not clear: Is it due to ecological changes in the micro-environment of the local breeding sites, parasites of the Simulium larvae or just the dilution of the adult fly-population by an increase of the population density of the human and bovine blood-hosts? Loulou performed a series of experiments to find answers.
The photo shows Jeremie (left) and Albert, studying the blackfly larval-population in the river Vina du Sud.
Immune recognition of Onchocerca volvulus proteins in the human host and animal models of onchocerciasis
T.K. Manchang, I. Ajonina-Ekoti, D. Ndjonka, A. Eisenbarth, M.D. Achukwi, A. Renz, N.W. Brattig, E. Liebau and M. Breloer
Abstract
Onchocerca volvulus is a tissue-dwelling, vector-borne nematode parasite of humans and is the causative agent of onchocerciasis or river blindness. Natural infections of BALB/c mice with Litomosoides sigmodontis and of cattle with Onchocerca ochengi were used as models to study the immune responses to O. volvulus-derived recombinant proteins (OvALT-2, OvNLT-1, Ov103 and Ov7).
The humoral immune response of O. volvulus-infected humans against OvALT-2, OvNLT-1 and Ov7 revealed pronounced immunoglobulin G (IgG) titres which were, however, significantly lower than against the lysate of O. volvulus adult female worms. Sera derived from patients displaying the hyperreactive form of onchocerciasis showed a uniform trend of higher IgG reactivity both to the single proteins and the O. volvulus lysate. Sera derived from L. sigmodontis-infected mice and from calves exposed to O. ochengi transmission in a hyperendemic area also contained IgM and IgG1 specific for O. volvulus-derived recombinant proteins.
These results strongly suggest that L. sigmodontis-specific and O. ochengi-specific immunoglobulins elicited during natural infection of mice and cattle cross-reacted with O. volvulus-derived recombinant antigens. Monitoring O. ochengi-infected calves over a 26-month period, provided a comprehensive kinetic of the humoral response to infection that was strictly correlated with parasite load and occurrence of microfilariae.
Journal of Helminthology, doi:10.1017/S0022149X14000224 Cambridge University Press 2014
Manchang Tanyi Kingsley is heading the Veterinary Research Laboratory of IRAD at Wakwa-Ngaoundere. He is a collaborator of Programme Onchocercoses since 2009 and prepares his dissertation with PD Dr. M. Beloer at the Bernhard-Nocht-Institute in Hamburg.
Babette Guimbang and Albert Eisenbarth visit the ILRI in Nairobi, Kenya on March 10th to discuss possibilities of future collaboration with view to QTL-studies in Northern Cameroon cattle.
Cand. biol. Loulou Peisl started her practice at the Programme Onchocercose laboratory in Ngaoundéré. She shall focus on the biology of Simulium damnosum s.l. larval populations at the local breeding site in the river Vina du Sud: What do these larvae feed, do they habour any parasites, which micht limit their survival and which parameters delimit the size of the larval population. i.e. the number of S. damnosum s.l. larvae that populate a specific breeding site.
Visit of Alfons Renz, Albert Eisenbarth and Babette Guimbang at the Sokoine University in Morogoro.
Reserachers from over 30 research projects present their ongoing studies on the epidemiology and control of neglected infectious diseases in Africa. Part of the German-Africam research-cooperation is our project on human and bovine onchocerciasis.
The meeting takes place at the White Sands beach hotel 20 km north of Dar es Salaam.
Lottie Duke is running the 2014 Bath Half Marathon 2014 on 2nd March in aid of Sightsavers.
Lottie’s father, Brian was a Doctor of Tropical medicine and his vision was to eradicate the disease River Blindness, commonly found in Sub Saharan Africa and Central America, that results in loss of sight. Unfortunately, Brian passed away in 2006. Lottie is committed to supporting her Father’s work on River Blindness by supporting Sightsavers, an international organisation that work in more than 30 countries to eliminate avoidable blindness and support people with visual impairments to live independently.
Click on the link below to read more about Lottie and her cause..
