Abstract: Mongolian gerbils and Wistar rats were inoculated orally with 240 and 2,500 Toxocara cati embryonated eggs, respectively, to evaluate the larval recovery in different tissues and organs, such as the liver, lungs, heart, kidney, and skeletal muscles after 5, 30, 49, 70, and 92 days post-infection (PI). Larval recovery rates were 1.7-30.0 % in Mongolian gerbils on days 5-92 PI and 0.2-3.8 % in rats on the same days. These results indicate that Mongolian gerbils and Wistar rats are suitable experimental paratenic hosts for the study of neurological toxocariasis as well as visceral toxocariasis. Key words: Toxocara cati, Mongolian gerbil, Wistar rat, experimental infection Toxocara cati is the common round worm of cats and its second stage larvae are possible causes of visceral larva migrans (VLM) or ocular larvae migrans (OLM) [1]. Human infection can occur by accidental ingestion of embryonated eggs of Toxocara species. The embryonated Toxocara eggs, when fed, hatch in the gut contents of human and the larvae migrate to the soft tissue of the body such as liver, heart, lungs and other organs [2,3]. Experimentally, mice, rats, monkeys, golden hamsters, Japanes
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