| Summary: | Foodborne parasitic diseases represent a major threat to public health. Trichinellosis, caused by the nematode parasite <i>Trichinella</i> spp., is one of the most important foodborne diseases, while alariosis, caused by the trematode parasite <i>Alaria</i> spp., is less common in humans, and rare cases have been reported only in the USA and Canada. Both parasites can infect humans via the consumption of raw or undercooked wild boar meat. In order to investigate the prevalence of these parasites in wild boar meat in Greece, samples from the diaphragm pillars and the region of the mandibular angle from 128 wild boars, hunted in Greece, were collected. The samples were examined by classical parasitological (compression, artificial digestion, and <i>Alaria</i> spp. migration) and by molecular (real-time PCR) methods. For <i>Trichinella</i> spp. an existent real-time PCR detecting all species likely to be present in Greece was applied, while for <i>Alaria</i> spp. a real-time PCR was developed, employing an LNA TaqMan probe targeting the large subunit ribosomal RNA gene. All examined wild boar samples from Greece resulted negative for <i>Trichinella</i> and <i>Alaria</i> species, indicating a low prevalence of infection in the examined population. The novel real-time PCR for <i>Alaria</i> spp. has 81.5% amplification efficiency and is able to detect 0.12 larvae per 50 g of tissue and could be utilized as a complementary to AMT diagnostic tool in surveillance.
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