Babesia microti

Babesia is a well know genus of protozoan parasites that were originally described in 1888 by Victor Babes.  They are some of the most abundant blood parasites worldwide today.  However, it was not until 1957 that the first human became infected by Babesia microti (Homer et al., 2000).  B. microti, is only one Babesia species that infects humans, and there are many other members of the genus who are capable of infecting other vertebrates.

Babesia microti  cannot be spread from person to person.  The parasite has a very specific life cycle that must be followed in order for one to become infected.  Infection can occur when a tick, in the genus Ixodes, containing B. microti  sporozoites takes a blood meal from a human or other vertebrate host.  The sporozoites then can enter blood cells, also known as erythrocytes, and reproduce through asexual reproduction. Reproduction in the blood is what causes the physical symptoms of the disease (CDC, 2010).

            The disease caused by B. microti is known as Babesiosis.  Common symptoms of the disease include nausea, chills, fever, headache and body ache.  The disease is most dangerous in people who do not have a spleen, elderly, and people who are immune compromised.  In order to become diagnosed with Babesiosis, B. microti must be observed inside the erythrocytes on a blood smears.  One problem that arises when observing blood smears is that B. microti can often look very similar to Plasmodium,  the malaria causing parasite (Homer et al., 2000).  In addition to this the symptoms caused by Babesiosis are also very similar to the symptoms that coincide with malaria.  It would be beneficial to study B. microti because it infects people in a very similar way to malaria parasites.  Any new prevention techniques or treatments used for one disease may also work for the other.

An additional reason why it may be beneficial to study B. microti is because it shares a vector (members of the Ixodes genus) with another parasite known as Borrelia burgdorferi.  B. burgdorferi is the parasite responsible for causing Lyme disease.   One problem that can arise from this is that because the two parasites share a vector they can often be transmitted together (Piesman et al., 1986).  This means that a victim of the parasites may be diagnosed with one of the parasites while the other goes unnoticed. Both of the diseases caused by these parasites can become dangerous if left untreated for an extended period of time.  By understanding a general description of how B. microti functions it could give strong insight to how other related parasites function as well. 

I was given the opportunity to view an actual blood smear of the organism and I was intrigued.  I wanted to know more about how B. microti functioned and how individuals became infected with it.  After viewing them in infected red blood cells it became more of a reality to me how problematic these parasites can be to people specifically in New England.  Most of the organisms we have learned about in class do not exist in the area  and  therefore becoming infected with them seems unrealistic.  However, B. microti is very common in the New England area and infects a large portion of New England Residence (Roberts and Janovy, 2009).

References

Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Babesiosis. 19 September 2012.(10 July

2012)< http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/babesiosis/diagnosis.html>.[19 September 2012]

Homer, M.J., Aguilar-Delfin, I., Telford, S,R., Krause, P.J., Persing, D.H. 2000.

Babesiosis. Clinical Microbiology Reviews. 13(3):451-469

Piesman, J., Mather, T.N., Telford, S.R., Spelman, A. 1986. Concurrent Borrelia

burgdorferi and Babesia microti infection in nymphal Ixodes dammini. Clinical

Microbiology Review. 24(3):446-447

Roberts, L.S., Janovy, J. 2009. Foundations of parasitology. McGraw-Hill, NY, 169 pp.