Study on the relationship between adult burden and egg per gram of feces in naturally infected sheep with Dicrocoelium dendriticum

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Abstract

 Abstract   Dicrocoeliasis, one of the very prevalent parasitic infections of herbivores, cause significant direct and indirect economic losses. At present, fecal examination is the most common method to diagnose the disease in alive animals, although no serious attention is paid to it due to its common subclinical form. In the present study total numbers of adult worms in the livers of 119 sheep naturally infected with Dicrocoelium dendriticum were counted. Meanwhile fecal egg count from the fecal sample of each sheep was also performed using flotation method. According to the mean number of adult worms in the livers 3 groups with minor infection ( mean number of worm < 500 ) mild infection ( mean number of worm 500-1000) and heavy infection (mean number of worms >1000) were performed. Evaluation of the linear relationship between the number of adult worms and egg per gram of feces were carried out using Pearson correlation coefficient. Correlation coefficient revealed that a positive association existed between two groups with light and mild infection (0

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