Increase of the prevalence of Echinococcus multilocularis infection in redfoxes in Lower Saxony

Echinococcus multilocularis is a tapeworm having carnivores as final hosts, the red fox in particular, dog and cat less frequent. its two host life cy cle consists of a larval cycle which predominantly takes place in the liver of rodents such as mice but it can also develop in musk rats as intermedia te hosts. Man can also be infected and serves as a wrong indermediate host. He develops an aveolar echinococcosis which usually ends lethal without me dical treatment. The prevalence of E, multilocularis among 5.365 red foxes in Lower Saxony was monitored from 1991 to 1997. The data were analysed usi ng spatial epidemiological methods. This evaluation is based on a significa nce test which was applied to the parameters of spatial autoregressive regr ession models (CAR) fitting to the data of two successive sampling periods from 1991-1994 and 1994-1997. The mean prevalence (spatial median) increase d from 6 % to 11 %. The results of this epidemiological study which was res tricted to Lower Saxony support for the first time the earlier reported ass umption that the prevalence of foxes infected with E. multilocularis has ri sen in Europe in the last decade. The reasons for this development are stil l unknown.