Taenia solium taeniasis/cysticercosis in Guatemala: a prevalent public health problem?

ABSTRACT

In Guatemala, neurocysticercosis (NCC) was first recognized in 1940; since then, cases of NCC have been reported in all Guatemalan departments. However, epidemiological studies on Taenia solium infections are scarce and most information remains unpublished. This study aims to provide evidence of T. solium infections as a public health problem in Guatemala. All information available, either published or unpublished, on T. solium infections in the country was compiled. Official data from the Ministry of Health for the period 2003–2019 were reviewed and analyzed, and all cases of T. solium infections were classified and counted. In total, 5246 cases of taeniasis and 454 cases of human cysticercosis were recorded. On the other hand, 44 studies were identified, mostly from local journals, which included 1951 cases of taeniasis, 2873 cases of human cysticercosis of which 543 were classified with complete diagnosis, and 2590 cases of porcine cysticercosis. Cases were classified by geographic region, patient sex, and Taenia species in taeniasis cases when information was available, and the departments with the highest number of taeniasis and cysticercosis cases were identified. Meanwhile, in Zacapa, a northeastern department of Guatemala with one the highest number of taeniasis cases, a young man diagnosed with a severe form of NCC and two cases of porcine cysticercosis (both confirmed by necropsy) were identified. Taken together, the data herein reported indicate that T. solium infections are a major health problem in Guatemala that needs to be addressed.

KEYWORDS:

• Cysticercosis
• Guatemala
• neglected tropical diseases
• taeniasis
• Taenia solium
• zoonosis

Acknowledgments

We thank the COCODEs (authorities of rural communities) Elfido Súchite and Laura Acevedo for their unconditional support in the rural areas of Zacapa. We express our gratitude to the family of the patient with NCC for their support in obtaining relevant data for the case report, and Roberto Mateo Delgado and Ilde Elifas Silva for their support in the fieldwork. We also thank MSc. Carlos Vargas, Dr. Manuel Barrios, Nrs. Orfa Espinales, and Andrea Morales from Centro Universitario de Zacapa-CUNZAC for their support in carrying out this work. Special thanks to MD David Stokes†, former chief of Neurosurgery at the Regional Hospital of Zacapa, for his essential contributions and collaboration. We thank SIGSA, Ministerio de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social. We thank Dr. Michael Parkhouse for providing us with the HP10 monoclonal antibody for the immunological diagnosis of the patient with NCC, and Programa de Investigación para el Desarrollo y la Optimización de Vacunas, Adyuvantes y Métodos Diagnósticos (PROVACADI), Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas, UNAM. We thank Dr. César Leonel Gonzalez Camargo (president of AGPMT) for providing literature for this review. We thank SIGSA personnel especially Isaura Fernández, Unidad de Información Pública-MSPAS. And Josselyn Morales Ramírez for her contributions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/20477724.2022.2083757

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.