[Investigation of anti-Toxocara canis IgG antibodies in patients presenting at The Erciyes University Medical Faculty, Department of Parasitology.].

Human Toxocara canis infections are seen all over the world, especially in temperate and tropical climate regions. Dogs are known to be reservoir hosts in transmission of the disease. Because puppies are infected both transplacentally and by breast milk, they add huge amounts of eggs daily to the environment with their stools for months. It is known that the human is not a natural host of T. canis and larvae do not mature in the human body. However, after getting into the human they migrate through visceral tissues and act like a foreign body in the places where they come to rest. In this study, anti-T. canis IgG antibodies were investigated by ELISA in 61 (54.6%) males and 51 (45.5%) females making a total of 112 patients aged between 1 and 68 years (average:18.54+/-24.5) presenting at our laboratory from different services of our hospital. Anti T. canis IgG antibodies were found to be positive in 24 (21.4%) patients.