Liver Fluke

Definition of Liver Fluke
(Scientific name: Fasciolosis)

From the elephant glossary Section: disease

Illustration of Fasciola jacksoni in a 1910 book, “Elephants and their diseases, a treatise on elephants” by G. H. Evans (CC BY 4.0 via National Library of Scotland)

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Fascioliasis, commonly called Liver Fluke, is a serious problem for elephants throughout Asia with continuous reports from India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia of considerable morbidity and Mortality in domestic and semi wild elephants.

The genus Fasciola contain 2 Species of Trematode worms, acting as parasites in animals, common on sheep who eat grass close to river or water, and other herbivores, with amphibious snails as host, and eggs can be found on grass close to water, where snails are living.

Fasciolosis is a zoonosis, which means that the parasite can be transferred between animals and humans, and infect inner organs, especially the liver (Hepar).

Elephant fascioliasis is considered to be one of the most neglected tropical veterinary diseases of working animals and understanding of infection in wild populations of elephants are extremely limited (Heneberg et al., 2013).

Prof Jayanthe Rajapakse led a team of veterinarians and parasitologists on a 39 month survey of the health of wild elephants across Sri Lanka from January 2000 to April 2003, collecting faecal samples from living elephants and performing autopsies on wild elephants that had been killed as a result of human activity as well as individuals with a fatal burden of F. jacksoni.

The autopsies showed that over 50% of the elephants were infected with F. jacksoni, with livers showing cholangitis, an inflammation of the bile duct, and major fibrosis of the liver, a scarring of the liver as result of the parasite’s activity.

2 Deceased elephants due to Liver Fluke.

Name	Species Sex	Origin	Age	Birth	Death date	Death reason	Parents	Arrival Death location
+ -Timon-	EM M	wild	11	1962	1973	disease Fasciolosis (infection of parasite liver fluke)	x	1964-00-00 Circus Carl Althoff
+ -Dago-	LA M	wild	?	<1963	1973	disease Fasciolosis (infection of parasite liver fluke)	x	1964-00-00 Circus Carl Althoff

Reference list Koehl, Dan, (2024). Liver Fluke. Elephant Encyclopedia, available online retrieved 20 September 2021 at https://www.elephant.se/index.php?id=255. (archived at the Wayback machine)

Sources used for this article is among others:

https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bugbitten/2019/07/12/fasciola-liver-flukes-infecting-wild-elephants-of-sri-lanka-tackling-tricky-taxonomy/

Selected publications

Links about Liver Fluke

Selected external links for this article about Liver Fluke:

Fasciola liver flukes infecting wild elephants of Sri Lanka: tackling tricky taxonomy, https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bugbitten/2019/07/12/fasciola-liver-flukes-infecting-wild-elephants-of-sri-lanka-tackling-tricky-taxonomy/

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Categories glossary | disease

About this documentThis document was created: 2023-05-17. Latest update: 2023-05-20 13:54:33 included 1607 characters with valid HTML5