Infections with gastrointestinal worms, including the roundworm Ascaris lumbricoides, occur
throughout the developing world and remain a major public health problem in the poorest
communities with lack of personal hygiene, environmental sanitation and safe drinking water.
Children are at highest risk of these worm infections, which lead to nutritional deficiencies,
anaemia and impaired physical and mental development. To fight these infections, World Health
Organization recommends mass drug administration programs, in which children receive a single
oral dose of albendazole or mebendazole, to clear/kill the adult stages of the parasites present in
the gut. In parallel to the pledges of increased drugs treatments, there is a pressing need for
improved diagnostic tools to monitor the progress of the drug administration programs and to
evaluate their impact on public health. This should allow program managers, policy-makers and
drug donors of the drugs to assess whether the objectives are being met and, if necessary, to
correct adjust the implementation control strategy. The aim of this research project is to
transform a serodiagnostic test, originally developed to measure exposure of pigs to Ascaris suum,
for use in humans and subsequently use the test it to investigate the epidemiology and impact of
ascariasis in humans