Human sparganosis was diagnosed by morphological and genetic analyses in Korea. The complete mitochondrial genomes of Spirometra erinaceieuropaei and S. decipiens isolated in Korea have been recorded. Present study was performed to provide information to diagnose the etiologic agent of sparganosis by multiplex PCR using mitochondrial genome sequences of S. erinaceieuropaei and S. decipiens. In an effort to examine the differential diagnosis of spirometrid tapeworms, multiplex PCR assays were performed on plerocercoid larvae of S. erinaceieuropaei and S. decipiens. The PCR products obtained using species-specific primers were positively detected in all PCR assays on mixture of S. erinaceieuropaei and S. decipiens DNA. S. erinaceieuropaei-specific bands (239 bp and 401 bp) were obtained from all PCR assays using a mixture of S. erinaceieuropaei-specific primers (Se/Sd-1800F and Se-2018R; Se/Sd-7955F and Se-8356R) and S. erinaceieuropaei template DNA. S. decipiens-specific bands (540 bp and 644 bp) were also detected in all PCR assays containing mixtures of S. decipiens-specific primers (Se/Sd-1800F and Sd-2317R; Se/Sd-7955F and Sd-8567R) and S. decipiens template DNA. Sequence analyses on these species-specific bands revealed 100% sequence identity with homologous regions of the mtDNA sequences of S. erinaceieuropaei and S. decipiens. The multiplex PCR assay was useful for differential diagnosis of human sparganosis by detecting different sizes in species-specific bands.
Keywords: Spirometra decipiens; differential diagnosis; human sparganosis; multiplex PCR; Spirometra erinaceieuropaei.