Parasitic pathogenic protozoa largely parasitize intracellularly, the course of these infections is acute, often cause the death. On the other hand, they can progress subclinically. The latent respectively chronic stage can follow the acute form and infections can persist throughout the whole life of the host. The course of the disease mostly depends also on the pathological agents. They stimul...

Trypanosomes belong to the order kinetoplastida, an early diverging group of organisms in the eukaryotic lineage. The principal reasons for interest in these organisms are twofold; they provide a superb distant triangulation point from which to assess global features of eukaryotic biology and, more importantly, they are representative of a number of pathogenic parasitic protozoa with a huge pub...

Ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) is an ATP-dependent proteolytic machinery of eukaryotes. Analogous systems have been characterized in eubacteria and archaea as well. Although the structure and functions of this machinery is welldocumented in yeast and vertebrates, knowledge of this machinery is rudimentary for unicellular parasitic protozoa. This chapter summarizes the current knowledge regar...

Many animals engage in many behaviors that reduce their exposure to pathogens. Ants line their nests with resins that inhibit the growth of fungi and bacteria (Chapuisat, Oppliger, Magliano, & Christe, 2008). Mice avoid mating with other mice that are infected with parasitic protozoa (Kavaliers & Colwell, 1995). Animals of many kinds—from physiologically primitive nematode worms to neurological...

There is a wide variety of food products that may be contaminated with one or more parasites and consequently enabling transmission to human beings. The prevalence of specific parasites in food supplies varies between countries and regions. Sources of food-borne products contaminated with parasites are pigs, cattle, fish, crabs, crayfish, snails, frogs, snakes and aquatic plants. One of the maj...

Protozoa and helminthes can affect the lung as a primary site, or a complication. Some parasites have a migration cycle through the lung (larva migrans), inducing blood and tissue eosinophilia. Clinical manifestations of lung involvement could be acute: asthma –like syndrome, or Loeffler’s syndrome, with dyspnea, wheezing, cough; or chronic such as hemoptysis or right heart failure signs. Acute...

Background: Intestinal parasitic infections are one of the commonest causes of morbidity in third world countries including, India. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of common intestinal parasitic infections in relation to demographic details of patients, attending a tertiary care hospital in Lucknow. Materials and Methods: A retrospective study was conducted from 1 January ...

Infections by parasitic protozoans are largely neglected, despite threatening millions of people, particularly in developing countries. With descriptions of the microbiota in humans, a new frontier of investigation is developing to decipher the complexity of host-parasite-microbiota relationships, instead of the classic reductionist approach, which considers host-parasite in isolation. Here, we...

N-Myristoyltransferase (NMT) represents a promising drug target for human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), which is caused by the parasitic protozoa Trypanosoma brucei. We report the optimization of a high throughput screening hit (1) to give a lead molecule DDD85646 (63), which has potent activity against the enzyme (IC(50) = 2 nM) and T. brucei (EC(50) = 2 nM) in culture. The compound has good ...

This review focuses on the vascular pathogenesis of Chagas' disease, the cardiomyopathy caused by infection with the parasitic protozoa Trypanosoma cruzi. Recent studies strongly suggests that T. cruzi infection is linked to functional changes in the activity of two potent vasoactive peptidergic mediators, endothelin-1, a vasoconstrictor, and kinins, a group of vasodilator and pro-inflammatory ...