Molecular identification of Paragonimus Ohirai and P-westermani from AnhuiProvince, China

Nucleotide sequences of the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region wer e determined from seven adults of species Paragonimus collected from Jinde and Xiuning Counties, Anhui Province, China. Among these, the nucleotide se quence obtained from one Paragonimus adult (Jinde County) was identical to the ITS2 sequence of P. ohirai previously reported, in order to confirm the result, partial regions of mitochondrial cytochrome C oxidase 1 (COl) and NADH dehydrogenase 1 (ND1) from the putative P. ohirai sample were further sequenced. They showed a high level of similarity with those of P. ohirai, COl (99.7 %) and ND1 (99.5 %), supporting the result obtained from the ITS2 . In addition to this, we designed P. ohirai- and P. westermani-specific pr imers (BDW and BD2OH) from ITS2 to identify P. westermani and P. ohirai eas ily and rapidly. After testing utility of-the primers, they were applied to identify seven unidentified Paragonimus samples collected from Jinde and X iuning Counties, China. Ail the examined samples showed P. westermani band pattern, and it was reconfirmed by sequencing their 1TS2 regions that they ore P. westermani. This result indicates that the two newly designed specif ic primers could be quite helpful for easily identifying P. westermani and P. ohirai, that most of Paragonimus in Jinde and Xiuning Counties consist o f P. westermani, and that P. ohirai exists in Jinde County with minority.