Seroprevalence of swine cysticercosis by antigen ELISA was 68.5% (404/590) and was disproportionate to the prevalence of all Taenia cysts detected by inspection. All but three of the inspection positive animals (three T. hydatigena positive pigs) were reactive in the ELISA; thereby providing evidence that the inspection results were specific, but not at all sensitive. Intestinal helminth studies in the Laos rarely describe the species of Taenia detected in stool ( Conlan et al., 2008), however Taenia tapeworms were partially identified to the species level in three recent studies. In a study on Opisthorchis viverrini infection ( Sayasone et al., 2009) in southern Laos, 23 tapeworms were recovered following praziquanltel

treatment and 18 were identified as T. saginata and the remaining five were not identified to the species level. The methods

used by Sayasone et al. (2009) to characterise the tapeworms were find more not reported. A similar study in Khammuane province in central Laos recovered 15 worms from 12 patients and all were morphologically identified as T. saginata ( Chai et al., 2009). T. asiatica Ivacaftor cost can be misclassified as T. saginata in the absence of molecular confirmation ( Anantaphruti et al., 2007) and caution should be exercised in interpreting data from the studies of Sayasone et al. (2009) and Chai et al. (2009) without the exclusion of T. asiatica from the differential diagnosis. The third study, conducted nationally, reported an overall taeniasis prevalence of 1.1% (408/37,090) from which 120 tapeworms were genetically and morphologically typed; three T. solium cases were identified from Luangprabang province in northern Laos ( Eom et al., 2009). To date, T. solium has only been reported in the north of the country whereas T. saginata has a national distribution, T. asiatica taeniasis has not yet been detected in Laos. T. solium taeniasis and cysticercosis PD184352 (CI-1040) have been confirmed in two regions of the Indonesian archipelago (see Willingham et al., 2010). In Bali, T. solium is endemic but transmission and prevalence seems to be on the decline ( Wandra et al., 2006, Wandra et al., 2007 and Sudewi et al., 2008). In Papua, T. solium appears

to be hyperendemic in at least two districts where seroprevalence levels in the human population are some of the highest in the world and endemic in a further two districts ( Salim et al., 2009). No other human Taenia species are known to be co-endemic in Papua ( Wandra et al., 2007). North Sumatra, Flores, Sulawesi and other regions are often reported in the literature to be endemic for T. solium, but there are no verifiable contemporary published data to support this assertion. T. solium taeniasis in humans or cysticercosis in pigs has not been reported from North Sumatra; rather, evidence indicates the area is endemic for T. asiatica ( Wandra et al., 2006 and Wandra et al., 2007) although this seems to be on the decline ( Ito et al., 2003). In Flores, published literature ( Simanjuntak et al.