The relationship between faecal egg counts, worm burden and tissue egg counts in early Schistosoma mattheei infections in cattle

Abstract The relationships between schistosome faecal egg counts (EPG), total tissue egg counts (TEC) and adult female worm burdens (FW) recorded at post-mortem examination of 30 Friesian calves from three different field trials were analysed. The calves in study 1 ( n =14) had been exposed to natural Schistosoma mattheei infections for 2 months, those of study 2 ( n =9) for between 4 and 12 months, and those in study 3 ( n =7) for 8 months. No clinical schistosomiasis was observed in any of the groups, and at perfusion, EPG's varied from 5 to 210, TEC's from 28,800 to 2,439,400 and FW's from 11 to 1218. There was as much variation in EPG, TEC and FW between calves with the same duration of exposure as between calves with different duration of exposure. There were very similar significant positive relationships between log transformed FW and log transformed EPG in all three groups ( P R 2 >0.46, slopes 0.957–1.015). There were also significant positive relationships between log transformed FW and log transformed TEC in all three groups ( P R 2 >0.45) and between log transformed TEC and log transformed EPG in all three groups ( P R 2 >0.48). All three studies had a linear relationship between log transformed FW and log transformed EPG with a slope value close to 1 ( P >0.845 for different from one). This indicates that there was no evidence of density dependence in the three studies for the relationship between FW and EPG. In contrast, there was no consistent relationship (in terms of slope) between either log transformed TEC and log transformed FW in the three studies (after correcting for differential duration of exposure), or log transformed TEC and log transformed EPG. For all three sets of comparisons the predictability of one parameter based on another was poor for a single sample.