Corrigendum to "Cryptosporidium parvum: From foal to veterinary students" [Vet. Parasitol. 219 (2016) 53-56 Doi: 10.1016/j.vetpar.2016.02.001]

The authors would like to make a clarification regarding thestatement “To our knowledge, no zoonotic transmission fromhorses has been reported before”, following the recognition of atleast three previous papers (Choen and Snowden, 1996; Konkleet al., 1997; Okhuysen et al., 1999) in which cases of cryptosporid-iosis in veterinary students after contact with foals had been cited.In particular:Choen and Snowden (1996), in a “continuing education article”about Cryptosporidial diarrhea in foals, reported: “Recently, veteri-nary students exposed to foals with cryptosporidial diarrhea at ourcollege developed parasitologically confirmed intestinal cryptosporid-iosis”.Konkle et al. (1997) described nosocomial transmission of Cryp-tosporidium in a veterinary hospital and stated that the source ofinfection had been a calf that spread Cryptosporidium parvum infec-tion to a pony, an arabian foal (probably the source of infection forthe vet students) and a llama.Okhuysen et al. (1999), in a study dealing with the virulence ofthree distinct C. parvum isolates, reported: “The third isolate, desig-nated TAMU, was collected from a veterinary student who was exposedduring necropsy of an infected foal”.In all the above-mentioned papers, the transmission from foalsto humans was not explicitly defined in the abstract and was notconsidered in the discussion. Furthermore, PubMed search usingthe keywords ‘Cryptosporidium’ and ‘foals’ failed to identify thesepapers The authors thank the reader that pointed out the omission.Other studies applying sub-genotyping, although not describ-ing cases of zoonoses, have indicated that C. parvum causing foaldiarrhea is often indistinguishable from the parasites isolatedfrom local human cryptosporidiosis cases (Grinberg et al., 2008,2009) suggesting that infected foals represent a potential source ofzoonotic cryptosporidiosis.The authors deem necessary to draw the readership’s attentionto these papers in order to remove any possible doubt about thepublic health hazard posed by infected foals.