We thank the laboratory technicians at the Department of
Pathology and Animal Health, University of Naples “Federico II”
and at the Department of Medical and Diagnostic Services, Swiss
Tropical and Public Health Institute for their dedicated work.
We are grateful to Mrs. M. Dobler for taking the pictures presented in Fig. 1, to the field team in Yunnan province and to
the study participants. This study was funded by the Commission for Research Partnership with Developing Countries (KFPE;
Bern, Switzerland; through the programme “Jeunes Chercheurs” to
PS). At the time of the study, PS was also supported by the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft (FAG; Basel, Switzerland) and
the Janggen-Pöhn-Stiftung (St. Gallen, Switzerland). XNZ was in
receipt of a grant from the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology through their support to the Key Laboratory of Parasite
and Vector Biology of the Chinese Ministry of Health (grant no.
2005DKA21104). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation, preparation of the manuscript
and submission for publication.