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Ocular onchocerciasis in Central America, Africa and British Isles

1964; Oxford University Press; Volume: 58; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0035-9203(64)90065-3

1878-3503

D. P. Choyce,

Mollusks and Parasites Studies

Personal experience shows that important differences exist between ocular onchocerciasis in the endemic zones of Central America and Africa, and amongst expatriates in the British Isles. In the infected coffee plantations of Guatemala the main cause of onchocercal blindness is the classical kerato-irido-cyclitis, which should be known as Pacheco-Luna's disease, because he first described it in 1918. Since 1939 excision of head nodules has kept the blindness rate to less than 1 per cent. In Africa the anterior segment lesions seem less intense, but the blindness rate (which is very variable) may be as high as 12 per cent., owing to posterior segment lesions being more frequent and more severe than in Central America. The possible reasons for these variations are discussed; the concept that a high prevalence of onchocercal blindness is primarily a social disease is put forward. It seems that intensive study of onchocerciasis in Guatemala and Mexico (where it flourishes in isolation from other filarial diseases, and amongst people with a fair nutritional standard) could yield much useful information. Equine periodic ophthalmia. Investigators elsewhere have shown that many cases are due to O. cervicalis; as yet little work has been done on this problem in the British Isles.