©2015 Pearl Research Journals
Human Intestinal Parasites Associated with Non-biting Flies
in Ile-Ife, Nigeria
Titus A. B. Ogunniyi
1
, Joshua S. Olajide
1*
and Oyelade O. J.
2
Accepted 16 October, 2015
1
Department of Medical Microbiology and Parasitology, Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences,
2
Natural History Museum, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
ABSTRACT
Non-biting flies are known to traverse contaminated sites, human habitations and, by extension, food
during which enteric pathogens carried from filthy sites are disseminated. Humans, knowingly or
unknowingly, ingest such pathogens with food, especially in cases of fresh foods. This study was
conducted to elucidate the presence, prevalence and transmission rate of human enteric parasites from
contaminated sites in Ile-Ife. Non-biting flies were caught with insect sweep nets from abattoirs, garbage
piles, fresh food markets and public latrines between December 2014 and May 2015. Each fly, having been
identified, was placed in vial half-filled with normal saline and rocked gently to dislodge the externally
attached organism after which it was subsequently dissected to remove the gut content. These were
examined under light microscope. 1083 flies were caught, out of which 124 were found with at least one
human intestinal parasite. Abattoirs recorded the highest number of infected flies (14.34%). Nine human
intestinal parasites were recorded. Entamoeba coli (32.33%) was most prevalent followed by Ascaris
lumbricoides (15.79%). Garbage piles had the highest number of flies (324) while public latrines had the
highest transmission rate, (19.76%). The difference between the number of parasites retrieved from the
body surface and gut content was found statistically significant.
Key words: Bionetwork, Human, Intestine, Parasite, Non-Biting Flies.
INTRODUCTION
Infectious diseases are product of the pathogen, vector,
host and environment. Entry or ingestion of human
intestinal parasites is always inadvertent and evidences
suggest that acquisition of parasites is neither rare nor
strictly fortuitous (Lafferty, 2006). Humans actively
consume parasites’ free living stages such as eggs,
larvae, cyst and trophozoites (Thieltges, 2008). Parasites,
often times, pre-munitively coexist and colonize human
gastrointestinal tract. Relatively, small numbers of human
intestinal parasites are capable of perturbing the orderly
intestinal structures or functions (Michael and Farthing,
2003; Fox et al., 1998). Vector-borne human intestinal
parasitic diseases are interspersed, many times, by the
non-biting flies, which optimize disease and illness
(WHO, 2014). This is due to flies ubiquity, overtly
divergent and unmatched structures, reproduction,
feeding habits and ecological diversity (Bruce, 1988).
More still, flies have always inevitably travelled with no
territorial boundaries from place to place in search of food
or breeding substrates.
Consequently, they bridge the bionetwork of spread of
human intestinal parasites in un-sanitized developing
countries. This is because these flies frequently traverse
faecal contaminated and filthy sites (Parrish and Ryan,
2014; Mahfouz et al., 1997). Although, other routes of
transmission such as contaminated water, human
*Corresponding author. E-mail: jsolajide@yahoo.com. Tel: +2347062819938.
Journal of Medical and Biological Science Research
Vol. 1 (9), pp. 124-129, November, 2015
ISSN: 2449-1810
Research Paper
http://pearlresearchjournals.org/journals/jmbsr/index.html