Modern ideas about sarcosporidia

AUTHORS : Tikhonova I.S. | Eliseeva O.I.

RELEVANT UNIVERSITIES : NPOC Eliseeva, Moscow, Russia

YEAR : 2002 | Category : Educational

The relevance of the study of sarcosporidia is determined by their great importance in medicine as causative agents of parasitic diseases of animals and humans. Sarcosporidia, or meat sporozoans, parasitize more than 93 species of mammals, birds and reptiles. Their life cycle proceeds with the obligatory participation of 2 hosts: intermediate and final. The oocyst membrane is very thin and fragile, which explains the difficulty of diagnosing by blood smears.

Another reason for diagnostic errors may be that the deformed shell can be overlooked at the light-optical level. Sporozoites released from sporocysts, developing in an intermediate host, are divided into precystic and cystic forms. Sporocysts that transit into the external environment can be infectious to other hosts. The precystic phase can be called the period of acute sarcocystosis.