ABSTRACT
This chapter provides state-of-the-art overviews on foodborne diseases caused by Metagonimus in relation to their etiology, biology, epidemiology, clinical presentation, pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Human metagonimiasis is mainly found in the Far East, including Korea, China, Japan, and the Far Eastern Russia. The diagnosis is based upon detecting eggs in fecal smears. In 1926, Faust and Nishigori found that the genus name Loxotrema was preoccupied by a molluscan species by Gabb in 1868 and gave an opinion that it should be named as Metagonimus yokogawai. The possibility of human infection was experimentally proved by infection to the author himself and also to his family. M. takahashii tends to be distributed along small streams, small rivers, and small ponds rather than big rivers or big lakes. In contrast to intestinal nematode infections, immunophysiology and immunopathogenesis have seldom been studied in Metagonimus and other intestinal trematode infections.
