A UC San Diego study published Tuesday found that more than 90% of freshwater game fish in Southern California had parasites capable of infecting humans and causing health problems.

The parasites are introduced species from elsewhere, and Americans are perhaps not aware of the risk, the authors write in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

“Americans don’t usually think about parasites when they eat freshwater fish because it hasn’t historically been an issue here,” said Ryan Hechinger, an ecologist and parasitologist at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the study’s senior author.

“But these trematodes have now been widely introduced in the U.S. and that means that doctors and the public should be aware.”

Trematodes, a type of flatworm, made up the study’s scope. The scient

See Full Page