From 2006 to 2010,
hospitals in Hanoi treated 10
human patients for
dirofilariasis. The worms were collected from parasitic places, and identification of the species was completed by morphology and molecular
methods. Ten
parasites were recovered either from the
conjunctiva (n=9) or
subcutaneous tissue (n=1). The
parasites were 4.0-12.5 cm in length and 0.5-0.6 mm in width. Morphological observations suggested all
parasites as
Dirofilaria repens. Three of the 10
parasites (1 from
subcutaneous tissue and 2 from
eyes) were used for molecular confirmation of the species identification. A portion of the mitochondrial cox1 (461 bp) was amplified and sequenced.
Nucleotide and
amino acid homologies were 95% and 99-100%, respectively, when compared with D. repens (Italian origin,
GenBank AJ271614; DQ358814). This is the first
report of
eye dirofilariasis and the second
report of
subcutaneous tissue dirofilariasis due to D. repens in
Vietnam.