Molecular diagnosis of Trichinella spp.: current status and future prospects

Trichinellosis, a significant parasitic zoonotic disease, poses a risk to public health as well as economic implications for the safety of animal feed. Consumption of raw or undercooked meat containing Trichinella larvae can lead to trichinellosis infection. Many molecular diagnostic methods have been developed to identify Trichinella spp. at muscle or intestine stages. However, no molecular diagnostic technique is currently advised for routine testing on Trichinella infection in food animals, particularly at the early stage of infection. Here, the authors review the development of molecular diagnostic techniques of Trichinella spp., such as PCR, RT-PCR, LAMP, RPA and other methods to detect Trichinella DNA. Recently, the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and CRISPR-associated proteins (CRISPR-Cas) technology holds great promise for diagnostic testing by providing rapid, sensitive and specific methods for detection. Diagnosis of Trichinella spp. based on CRISPR-Cas system may be a promising method meeting the needs of individual testing.