Fascioliasis is a parasitic disease caused by two species present in the liver: hepatic fasciola, which is prevalent worldwide, and Fasciola gigantica, which is found in Asia and Africa. The high pathogenicity of this disease ...
Jul 18, 2019
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A new study from Iowa State University entomologists describes how mosquitoes fight off parasites that cause malaria, a disease that sickens millions of people every year.
Jul 10, 2019
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Cryptosporidiosis, a diarrheal disease, is caused by the microscopic parasite cryptosporidium, or crypto, and it could be living in your public pool.
Jul 10, 2019
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People wondering about catching swimmer's itch can get in the know with a University of Alberta website before heading to the lake this summer.
Jun 25, 2019
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The intestinal parasite Cryptosporidium, which causes a diarrheal disease, is very good at infecting humans. It's the leading cause of waterborne disease from recreational waters in the United States. Globally, it's a serious ...
Jun 20, 2019
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One of the most common causes of diarrhea worldwide—accounting for millions of cases and tens of thousands of deaths, mostly of small children—is the parasite Cryptosporidium. Doctors can treat children with Cryptosporidium ...
Jun 20, 2019
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Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine have discovered how a dangerous parasite maintains a steady supply of nutrients while replicating inside of its host cell: it calls for delivery.
Jun 19, 2019
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An alignment of researchers, health ministries and the World Health Organization has outlined the key steps to develop a global program to control scabies—the parasitic disease that affects 450 million people each year ...
Jun 14, 2019
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Researchers from the University of Oxford, along with partners from five institutions around the world, have identified the human antibodies that prevent the malaria parasite from entering blood cells, which may be key to ...
Jun 13, 2019
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Antimalarial drugs appear to follow a typical pattern, with early effectiveness eventually limited by the emergence of drug resistance. A report in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics describes a new assay using whole blood ...
Jun 13, 2019
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Parasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between two different organisms where one organism, the parasite, takes favor from the host, sometimes for a prolonged time. In general, parasites are much smaller than their hosts, show a high degree of specialization for their mode of life, and reproduce more quickly and in greater numbers than their hosts. Classic examples of parasitism include interactions between vertebrate hosts and diverse animals such as tapeworms, flukes, the Plasmodium species, and scabs. Parasitism is differentiated from parasitoidism, a relationship in which the host is always killed by the parasite such as moths, butterflies, ants, flies and others.
The harm and benefit in parasitic interactions concern the biological fitness of the organisms involved. Parasites reduce host fitness in many ways, ranging from general or specialized pathology (such as castration), impairment of secondary sex characteristics, to the modification of host behaviour. Parasites increase their fitness by exploiting hosts for food, habitat and dispersal.
Although the concept of parasitism applies unambiguously to many cases in nature, it is best considered part of a continuum of types of interactions between species, rather than an exclusive category. Particular interactions between species may satisfy some but not all parts of the definition. In many cases, it is difficult to demonstrate that the host is harmed. In others, there may be no apparent specialization on the part of the parasite, or the interaction between the organisms may be short-lived. In medicine, only eukaryotic organisms are considered parasites, with the exclusion of bacteria and viruses. Some branches of biology, however, regard members of these groups as parasitic.[citation needed]
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