Laboratory Culture and Life Cycle of in Intermediate and Definitive Hosts

Human thelaziasis caused by is being increasingly reported worldwide. Notably, an epidemic trend is observed in Southwest China. Whether found in Southwest China can act as a vector of and human-derived animal infections has not been widely reported. Here, . was maintained in a laboratory and experimentally infected with first-stage larvae collected from adult that were isolated from infected human subjects. Dead were subjected to PCR assay and dissected every two days to detect . Subsequently, live flies were used to infect a rabbit. The infection procedures were performed once a day (20 min) for two weeks. The results show that L1 collected from the adult could successfully parasitize captured in Zunyi, a city in Southwest China, and developed into L3, and a rabbit was successfully infected with using as the intermediate host. The present study demonstrates a human-derived infection in rabbits, through , under laboratory conditions for the first time. These results provide insights into the transmission cycle of and constitute a foundation to develop an effective treatment protocol for infection.