Background: Fascioliasis is a common disease among humans and animals. Having global distribution, disease is developed by hepatic trematodes, Fasciola hepatica and F. gigantica. The main objective of this research was determining the prevalence of Fasciola species in Hamadan livestock and identifying those using PCR-RFLP.
Methods: Overall, 13607 livestock livers in the slaughterhouse of Hamadan, west of Iran including 10846 sheep, 995 cattle and 1766 goats were examined in 2015. In addition, 75 Fasciola (41 worms from sheep, 22 worms from goats and 12 worms from cattle) were examined by PCR-RFLP method.
Results: Totally, 100 livers were infected to Fasciola species (total prevalence: 0.74%; sheep 0.5%, goats 1.4%, cattle 1.5%). In the molecular results, prevalence of F. hepatica was higher than (92.5% in the sheep) F. gigantic, and in the cattle 91.5% and in the goats was 54.5% F. hepatica. Genotyping identified species confirmed intermediated types as F. hepatica.
Conclusion: Prevalence of Fasciola in this province is not so high. Intermediate types identified by PCR-RFLP method determined as F. hepatica by nucleotide sequencing. Because of morphological differences and interspecies variety, the accurate identification of Fasciola species needs using nucleotide sequencing.
Keywords: Fasciola; Iran; PCR-RFLP; Prevalence.