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The Effects of Natural Food-Preservative Substances on the Development and Survival of Intestinal Helminth Eggs and Larvae

I. Action on Ascaris lumbricoides Eggs^*

Various substances commonly used as food preservatives were tested for ability to kill or prevent the development of infective larvae of Ascaris lumbricoides. Eggs for the tests were washed without chemicals from human stools and the infective-stage eggs were obtained by culturing in water for 3 weeks or longer.

In aqueous solutions at concentrations adaptable to practical situations, salt, sugar, vinegar (acetic acid) and ethyl alcohol were essentially without effect on either the infective or developmental stages. At 40 days in half-strength bean sauce there was relatively poor survival of larvae and no development beyond the one-cell stage, although eggs remained viable. In 1% garlic, 5% mustard and 20% onion infusions, infective larvae were killed in 40 days or less; eggs were killed in 20 days or less. Infusions of up to 20% red pepper had no effect on the infective stage and did not kill the eggs, but did bar their development. In 5% infusions of clove, allspice, and cinnamon and 10% ginger for 40 days, there was 50% or less survival of the infective larvae, and eggs did not develop beyond the cleavage stages; some of the eggs were still viable in the cinnamon and ginger, however, as demonstrated by recultivation in water.

Tests on mixtures of the various substances according to pickling recipes, on certain modifications of these formulas, and on garlic and mustard infusions under various conditions indicated again that garlic and mustard are toxic to both larval and developmental stages, that there is little if any enhancement of the killing effect by combining these with less toxic substances, that vinegar and 10% acetic acid interfere with the killing action of garlic and mustard, and that different collections of eggs appear to vary in their susceptibility to the action of garlic and mustard.

^* From the Department of Tropical Medicine and Public Health, Tulane Medical School, New Orleans; supported in part by Research Grant B-752 from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness of the National Institutes of Health, United States Public Health Service.