Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. You may share and adapt the material, but must give appropriate credit to the source, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made. Seven cases of urogenital schistosomiasis occurred in Corsica in and The episodes were related to exposure to the same river and involved the same parasite strain as an outbreak with cases in summer The connection calls for further investigations on the presence of an animal reservoir and the survival of infested snails during winter.
However, recontamination of the river from previously infected bathers remains the most likely hypothesis. Keywords: Schistosomiasis, parasitic diseases, bulinus, outbreaks, Corsica, France. Since , seven cases of urogenital schistosomiasis reported exposure to the Cavu river in southern Corsica. They had no history of contact to fresh water in endemic areas.
Here, we describe the cases indicating persistent schistosomal transmission linked to this river since To date, no contamination has been related to an exposure in , but cases might arise in the coming months considering the long parasitic cycle in humans. Therefore, physicians in France and elsewhere should test possible clinical cases, regardless of the year of exposure to the Cavu river.
In and , five cases of urogenital schistosomiasis linked to exposure to the Cavu river in were notified to regional health authorities. An autochthonous urogenital schistosomiasis case was defined as a person with serological evidence of schistosomiasis or Schistosoma eggs in urine, and no history of contact with fresh water in known endemic areas. A case was classified as confirmed when presenting Schistosoma eggs at urine or biopsy examination.
We classified a case as probable when the person either presented one positive serological test and a positive Western blot, or two positive serological tests and no Western blot. A possible case was a person presenting one isolated positive serological test or two discordant serological tests. The first probable case was detected at the end of Table , Case 1 and described in a previous article [ 1 ]. In March , based on the results from different serological tests for schistosomiasis, two members of another family were classified as probable cases Table , Family 1.
