A preliminary study for building a reference serum bank to identify freshwater snails in Lorestan Province

Snails transfer certain parasites that are important in medicine and veterinary medicine. There is a wide range of trematodes that are particularly important. One of the main issues in trematode parasitology is the diagnosis of the intermediate host snail. The present study was conducted to build a reference serum bank for identifying freshwater snails in Lorestan Province. After sampling and identifying the snails, the soft body of each species was separately extracted. After injecting soft body with adjuvant into rabbits and preparing their serum, counterimmunoelectrophoresis was performed to ensure the appearance of antibodies and evaluations were made on the interaction between antigens and serums. The species showed a positive reaction in low dilutions. High concentrations of the serum were therefore collected as the reference serum for identifying all the observed species. The reference serum bank can be used alongside counterimmunoelectrophoresis to identify freshwater snails. Given the results of this study, building a reference serum bank can provide a precise method for confirming the detection of the samples sent to the laboratory.