[From recognition to practice: The 140th anniversary of the discovery of Clonorchis sinensis].

It has been the 140th anniversary since the discovery of Clonorchis sinensis, of which adult worms were found by McConnell in an oversea Chinese in Calcutta, India, September of 1874. Then, Japanese scholar Kobayashi proved that freshwater fish served as the second intermediate hosts in 1910, while another Japanese parasitologist Muto found that the first intermediate hosts were freshwater snails in 1918. However, the perniciousness has not been recognized until recently. C. sinensis infection was classified as definite carcinogen (group 1) in cholangiocarcinoma in 2009 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, WHO, and listed as one of the 17 diseases in WHO's first report on neglected tropical diseases in 2010, while its disease burden was published on line in an international journal in 2011. Nevertheless, our awareness on and practices in the control of clonorchiasis still lag behind the reality. Great efforts on research and control of clonorchiasis are especially required in China, since China takes the biggest share in global disease burden of clonorchiasis.