Alveolar echinococcosis in China.

DATA SOURCES: All reference data originated from related Chinese- or English-language literature in Chinese journals.

STUDY SELECTION: Twenty-three original articles published in 1992-1996 were selected according to the stated purpose and 9 of them were written by myself.

DATA EXTRACTION: The present paper dealt with 5 subtopics, i.e. epidemiology, parasitology, pathology, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis.

RESULTS

Five hundred and eighty-four patients with alveolar echinococcosis (AE) have been reported from 7 provinces or autonomous regions. Human infection rate was 19.2% or 2.8%, and the morbidity was 2.4%-5.0%. The intermediate hosts of Echinococcus multilocularis included 7 species of rodents and 3 species of livestocks, and the final hosts of that were fox, dog or wolf. Diagnosis of AE was chiefly based on imaging examination (ultrasound and CT) and immunological test. The operative resection rate for liver AE was only 10.5% (27/258). Albendazole was a certain remedy for the chemotherapy of AE, and TCM "Xiao-Bao" pill may be a hopeful drug.

CONCLUSIONS

In the past 30 years, a lot of work concerning basic and clinical studies has been done in China and some achievements have been achieved. However, some important problems such as how to conduct further research on molecular biology, how to make early diagnosis, how to improve the chemotherapeutic effect, and how to control the prevalence of AE, need to be studied more deeply in the 21st century.