High parasite prevalence driven by the human-animal-environment interface: A One Health Study in an urban area in southern of Chile
This work is the first in Chile to conduct parasitological study with an integrative OneHealth approach. This means that the prevalence of parasites in humans, dogs (owned and stray), and in local parks and squares were studied simultaneously. We also used techniques such as ELISA for Toxocara canis and next-generation sequencing (NGS), as these provide us with information on extraintestinal parasites andparasite subtypes, respectively.To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study in our country that can demonstrate with data the importance of zoonotic and environmental transmission to humans in an urban area. Thus, this study shows that by looking at the parasitehost-environment relationship in a more comprehensive way, we have been able to obtain information on the parasite transmission pathwaysand thus demonstrate that zoonosis and environmental play a primordial role in parasite transmission affecting humans. These results are a wake-up call to adopt policies that are adapted to the actual transmission patterns of parasites. Finally, we consider that our study, carried out in a small urban area, can serve as a study model to be replicated at different scales in our country as well as in other countries in the region.