Differentiating Schistosoma haematobium from Related Animal Schistosomes by PCR Amplifying Inter-Repeat Sequences Flanking Newly Selected Repeated Sequences

In schistosomiasis elimination programs, successful discrimination of Schistosoma haematobium from the related animal Schistosoma parasites will be essential for accurate detection of human parasite transmission. Polymerase chain reaction assays employing primers from two newly selected repeated sequences, named Sh73 and Sh77, did not discriminate S. haematobium when amplifying Sh73-77 intra- or inter-repeats. However, amplification between Sh73 and the previously described DraI repeat exhibited discriminative banding patterns for S. haematobium and Schistosoma bovis (sensitivity 1 pg and 10 pg, respectively). It also enabled banding pattern discrimination of Schistosoma curassoni and Schistosoma intercalatum, but Schistosoma mattheei and Schistosoma margrebowiei did not yield amplicons. Similar inter-repeat amplification between Sh77 and DraI yielded amplicons with discriminative banding for S. haematobium, and S. bovis; however, S. mattheei was detected only at low sensitivity (1 ng). The Sh73/DraI assay detected snails infected with S. haematobium, S. bovis, or both, and should prove useful for screening snails where discrimination of S. haematobium from related schistosomes is required.