Cestode and trematode infections

Abstract

[Extract] Given that much of the human race has taken sustenance from the sea for millennia, remarkably few species of truly marine parasitic platyhelminths have taken advantage of this. All that do are probably zoonotic (pathogens that can be exchanged between vertebrate animals and humans) and their life cycles can be maintained naturally in the absence of humans. For both trematodes and cestodes, taxonomic and diagnostic uncertainties make it difficult to be dogmatic about the numbers of species that can occur in humans. Attempts to provide comprehensive lists are in Coombs and Crompton (1 991) and in the appendices to Taylor etal. (2001).