Infectious Disease
Chapters
« previous | page 2 of 3 pages | next »Host Cell Actin Remodeling in Response to Cryptosporidium
Steven P. O'Hara, Aaron J. Small, Xian-Ming Chen and Nicholas F. LaRusso
Despite sporadic reports of Cryptosporidium infection throughout the 1900s, the clinical significance of this parasite in humans was not recognized until the first documented human diagnosis of C. parvum in 1976, and the subsequent realization that as an opportunistic infectious agent, Cryptosporidi...
How Does Trypanosoma cruzi Survive the Toxic Effects of Reactive Oxygen Species?
Shane R. Wilkinson and John M. Kelly
Biological molecules are subject to attack by reactive oxygen species (ROS) leading to membrane disruption, inactivation of essential enzymes, mutagenesis and damage to DNA repair machinery. In aerobic organisms these ROS are produced by a number of endogenous processes and extensive sys...
Immune System Polymorphism Implications for Genetic Engineering
Tom J. Little
As is apparent from the evolution of antibiotic resistance or vaccine escape mutants, parasites and pathogens have the capacity to repeatedly evolve adaptations which enable them to overcome medical interventions. However, evolution may also occur as a natural, ongoing coevolutionary process. Gen...
Impact of Polyclonal Lymphocyte Responses on Parasite Evasion and Persistence
Paola Minoprio
In the field of immunoparasitology it is generally accepted that the survival and degree of pathogenicity of parasites is inextricably linked to their ability to escape and resist immune responses. Thus, numerous strategies have been proposed to explain the ability o...
Impact of Technological Improvements on Traditional Control Strategies
Mark Q. Benedict and Alan S. Robinson
Since 1982 when transgenesis of Drosophila melanogaster splashed onto the scientific scene, members of the vector biology community (e.g., refs. 3,4) and international public health organizations have recognized the potential utility of transgenesis to produce a modern incarnation of a historically ...
Innate Control of Toxoplasma gondii through Macrophage-Based Effector Mechanisms
Gregory A. Taylor
Macrophages and other host cells possess an array of effector mechanisms that restrict intracellular replication of Toxoplasma gondii in a cell autonomous manner. These effectors are diverse and include proteins such as phagocyte oxidase that catalyze the production of substances toxic to T. gondii,...
Innate Recognition, Cell Signaling and Pro-Inflammatory Response during Infection with Trypanosoma Cruzi
Catherine Ropert and Ricardo T. Gazzinelli
Innate immunity has an important role in host resistance to early infection with the intracellular protozoan parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi. Here we review the studies that identified several parasite molecules which activate cells from innate immune system, such as macrophages and dendritic cells (DCs...
Insect Population Suppression Using Engineered Insects
Luke Alphey, Derric Nimmo, Sinead O'Connell and Nina Alphey
Suppression or elimination of vector populations is a tried and tested method for reducing vector-borne disease, and a key component of integrated control programs. Genetic methods have the potential to provide new and improved methods for vector control. The required genetic technology is simpler t...
Intestinal Invasion by Entamoeba histolytica
Shahram Solaymani-Mohammadi and William Petri
Entamoeba histolytica is a protozoan parasite that infects humans and causes the disease amebiasis. The spectrum of intestinal amebiasis varies from colonization without symptoms to fulminating diarrhea and intestinal hemorrhage. The dissemination of the parasite via invasion of the intestinal epith...
Invasion and Intracellular Survival by Toxoplasma
L. David Sibley, Audra Charron, Sebastian Håkansson and Dana Mordue
Toxoplasma gondii infects a wide range of warm-blooded vertebrates including humans and is one of the world’s most successful parasites. As a member of the phylum Apicomplexa, T. gondii is a model for understanding infection by a variety of related parasites such as Plasmodium and Cryptosporidium. A...
Macrophage Biology
D.M.E. Bowdish and Siamon Gordon
The importance of macrophages in the host response to infection has been recognised for decades. However, the macrophage has a range of phenotypes, functions and activation states and consequently the study of macrophage biology is complicated by the heterogeneity of these cells. An understanding of...
Macrophages, Alternative Niches for Intracellular Growth of Trypanosoma cruzi
Julio Scharfstein and Marcos André Vannier dos Santos
Widely distributed in the peripheral and lymphoid tissues, macrophages are key effectors of cellular immunity during infection by Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas’ disease. At the onset of infection, insect-transmitted metacyclic trypomastigotes invade tissue-resident macrophages a...
Malaria and Structural Adjustment: Proof by Contradiction
Julie Castro and Damien Millet
The evolution of malaria over the last thirty years shows that far from regressing, the disease is actually in a process of reglobalisation. While health institutions confine them selves to analysing the economic impact of the pandemic, the authors call for a reposing of the problem in other term...
Malaria Parasite Virulence in Mosquitoes and Its Implications for the Introduction and Efficacy of GMM Malaria Control Programmes
Heather Ferguson, Sylvain Gandon, Margaret Mackinnon and Andrew Read
Initial scepticism about the ecological feasibility of the genetically modified mosquito (GM) approach for malaria control1,2 has been supported by some recent experimental studies indicating that the insertion of transgenes, including those that induce refractoriness to malaria, confers a fitness c...
Malaria Situation in the Beginning of the 2Ist Century
Mahamadou A. Théra, Abdoulaye A. Djimdé, Alassane Dicko, Mahamadou Diakité, Kassoum Kayentao, Boubacar Traoré, Amagana Dolo and Ogobara K. Doumbo
Falciparum malaria parasite an avian originated parasite has probably coevolved with human being (Homo sapiens) since the discovery of agriculture, around 20-30 000 years ago. The very devastating parasite disease has spread worldwide and killed millions of people. This ancient disease became su...
Malaria-Refractoriness in Mosquito: Just a Matter of Harbouring Genes?
Christophe Boëte
Amongst the last vector-based hopes for malaria control and possibly the most touted is, without doubt, the use of transgenic mosquitoes able to kill/ block the development of malaria parasites and thus to interrupt malaria transmission. This potential solution is gaining some support because of...
Microneme Proteins in Apicomplexans
Vern B. Carruthers and Fiona M. Tomley
The invasive stages (zoites) of most apicomplexan parasites are polarised cells that use their actinomyosin-powered gliding motility or “glideosome” system to move over surfaces, migrate through biological barriers and invade and leave host cells. Central to these processes is the timely engagement ...
Modifying Insect Population Age Structure to Control Vector-Borne Disease
Peter E. Cook, Conor J. McMeniman and Scott O'Neill
Age is a critical determinant of the ability of most arthropod vectors to transmit a range of human pathogens. This is due to the fact that most pathogens require a period of extrinsic incubation in the arthropod host before pathogen transmission can occur. This developmental period for the pathogen...
Modulation of Positive Signaling and Proinflammatory Responses by Hemozoin, a Plasmodium Metabolic Waste
Martin Olivier and Maritza Jaramillo
During its intraerythrocytic life cycle, Plasmodium digests up to 80% of host hemoglobin as its nutrient source. However, this process releases the monomer heme that is very toxic for the parasite. Therefore, heme is sequestered as an insoluble, crystalline, dark-brown pigment called hemozoin (HZ), ...
Negative Signaling and Modulation of Macrophage Function in Trypanosoma cruzi Infection
Flávia L. Ribeiro-Gomes , Marcela F. Lopes and George A. DosReis
Macrophages serve either as host and primary effector cells against Trypanosoma cruzi, the protozoan parasite responsible for Chagas disease. Although the parasite mobilizes innate and adaptive immune responses that induce macrophage activation and keep infection under control, T. cruzi persists in ...
Paratransgenesis Applied for Control of Tsetse Transmitted Sleeping Sickness
Serap Aksoy, Brian Weiss and Geoffrey Attardo
African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Subsaharan Africa for human and animal health. In the absence of effective vaccines and efficacious drugs, vector control is an alternative intervention tool to break the disease cycle. This chapter describes ...
Perspectives on the State of Insect Transgenics
David A. O'Brochta and Alfred M. Handler
Genetic transformation is a critical component to the fundamental genetic analysis of insect species and holds great promise for establishing strains that improve population control and behavior for practical application. This is especially so for insects that are disease vectors, many of which are ...
Phagocyte Effector Functions against Leishmania Parasites
Christian Bogdan
Leishmania parasites are sandfly-transmitted protozan pathogens that cause a spectrum of important diseases in humans, but have also served as important model organisms for the characterization of antimicrobial effector mechanisms. In both mice and humans NADPH phagocyte oxidase (phox) and inducible...
Predicting the Spread of a Transgene in African Malaria Vector Populations: Current Knowledge and Limitations
Frédéric Simard and Tovi Lehmann
One strategy for the control of malaria and other vector-borne diseases relies on the ambitious goal of depleting natural vector populations’ ability to transmit the pathogen through the introduction and spread of an engineered genetic construct. In this chapter, we assess whether the data accumul...
Pro-Inflammatory Responses and Cell Signaling During Malaria Infection: The Parasite Glycosylphosphatidylinositol Ligand
D. Channe Gowda
A key feature of malaria infection is the production of high levels of TNF-a and other pro-inflammatory mediators that are thought to contribute to the systemic and organ-related malaria syndromes. In infection with Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes fatal forms of malaria, the adherenc...
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