Immunity to adult cestodes

Most research on immunity to adult cestodes has been carried out on the Hymenolepididae in laboratory animals, with comparatively few studies... 

Andreassen, J. (1981). Immunity to adult cestodes. Parasitology (EMOP Proceedings, 4) 82 153-9. 

One parenteral cestode that is widely accepted as a model for cysticercosis caused by T. solium in humans is Taenia crassiceps, which is found as an adult in foxes and has a rodent intermediate host. Larval T. crassiceps reproduce by budding in the peritoneal cavity of mice and can be serially transferred from mouse to mouse. The immune response, which controls larval growth, relies on T cell-mediated immune mechanisms (Lopez-Briones et al., 2001) and treatments resulting in increased delayed type hypersensitivity led to greater resistance, while AB production was unaffected (Bojalil eta/., 1993). 

There is surprisingly little information on the immune response to gut-lumen-dwelling adult stages of taenids and echinococcid cestodes (Moreno et al., 2004). Knowledge of the immune response to hymenolepidids has been mostly obtained from H. diminuta or H. nana infection of rodents. The former model is particularly useful because H. diminuta is not auto-infective and responses can be compared in the non-permissive murine and permissive rat hosts. 

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