Protozoa Flashcards
Describe the protozoa kingdom.
- Single celled organisms
- Very small organisms measured in microns
- Eukaryotes – so have a nucleus and complex sub-cellular organisation
- Unknown until the invention of the microscope in 1675
What are 6 examples of disease caused by parasitic protozoa?
Amoebic dysentery
Malaria
Sleeping sickness and animal trypanosomiasis
Tick-borne diseases of livestock
Toxoplasmosis
Coccidiosis
What are the most important 4 phyla a parasitic protozoa can be?
Phylum apicomplexa – apicomplexans move by body flexion, all are parasitic and use the apical complex to invade host cells.
Phylum euglenozoa – flagellates move by 1 or more whip like processes or flagella.
Phylum ciliophora – ciliates move by short hair-like processes or cilia.
Phylum ameobozoa – amoeba move by processes or pseudopodia.
Distinguish direct and intermediate hosts.
Definitive host – one in which a parasite reaches maturity and usually reproduces sexually.
Intermediate host – one in which the parasite develops, but does not reach maturity or reproduce sexually.
What host does a vector require?
Definitive host and intermediate host vector.
What are enteric pathogens?
Direct and indirect life cycles and live in GI tract. Water borne or soil transmitted
What are haemoparasites?
- Indirect life cycles and live in the blood
- Vector borne – transmission by mosquitos, tsetse fly, tick
- Cause fever, anaemia and worse
What are systemic pathogens?
Have examples form both enteric pathogens and haemoparasites
What are some examples of coccidia?
A broad grouping of apicomplexan parasites
- Eimeria
- Isospora
- Cryptosporidium
- Toxoplasma
- Sarcocystis
What are trophozoites?
Feeding stages that move around in tissues are trophozoites. Have gametes that can be fertilised to form oocysts.
What is the structure of apicomplexa?
Rhoptries
Micronemes
Polar rings
Conoid
What does the structure of apicomplexa allow them to do?
Anable parasite to penetrate host cell. Activated by the release of sequestered calcium ions into the parasite cytoplasm.
Describe the process of apicomplexa entering the host cell.
- Receptor detects ligand in a host cell
- Re-orientation so apical complex is ready to invade cell
- Parasitophorous vacuole forming
- Parasite inside vacuole where it lives are evades destruction by the immune system.
How do apicomplexa multiply?
By schizogony – multiple nuclear division precedes cytoplasmic division.
What are Eimeria?
A major enteric coccidian pathogen of global importance. Numerous individual species affect poultry and other livestock causing the disease coccidiosis.
What is the lifecycle of Eimeria?
- Spend part of their lifecycle in poultry and another part of their lifecycle in the environment.
- Unsporulated egg like structure passed out of the intestine.
- Undergoes sporulation and develops internal structures known as sporocysts
- Host becomes infected upon ingestion.
- Sporozoites are released and enter the gut epithelial cells, where they multiply by schizogony – asexual cycles.
- Breaks up into new parasites called merozoites.
- There is a last schizogony event and there is development of microgametes for male gametes and macrogametes for female gametes.
- Fertilisation to form a zygote which is passed up as an unsporulated oocyst.
- Whole cycle is about 3.5-5.5 days.
What do coccidia and disease depend on?
Parasite factors:
- Parasite species
- Predilection site in intestine
Environmental conditions:
- Temperature
- Humidity
- Hygiene
Host factors:
- Age – young
- Immunity – naive
- Density – intensification
Typically causes bloody diarrhoea
What is the pathology caused by Eimeria tenella?
- Thickening of mucosa
- Inflammation
- Haemorrhage
- Necrosis.
- Has predilection for the caeca, which is useful for diagnosis.
What are the infective stages of Eimeria?
- Unsporulated oocyst
- Oocyst require warmth, moisture and oxygen to sporulate
- Sporulated oocyst, which can resist disinfection and persist in environment
- Oocysts eaten by chicken
Describe cryptosporidium parvum.
- A very tiny coccidian parasite
- Pathogen of domestic animals and humans
- Causes cryptosporidiosis
- Common zoonosis
What are the clinical signs of cryptosporidiosis?
- Clinical signs – intermittent anorexia and diarrhoea
- No treatment – usually self-limiting
Describe the life cycle of cryptosporidium parvum.
- Direct life cycle but humans get it often from drinking water where other people have been.
- Lives in brush border of gut epithelium cells
- Asexual and similar sexual cycle of Eimeria
Describe the locations of cryptosporidium schizonts.
- Located within brush border
- Parasite develops in a space between the cytoplasm and the cell membrane
- Located within parasitophorous vacuoles covered by host microvillous membranes
- Intracellular but extra-cytoplasmic location
- Infected microvilli are destroyed when the parasite leaves the cells
Describe cryptosporidium oocysts.
- 1 calf can produce up to 10^7 oocysts per gram of faeces
- Measure 3-5m in diameter
- Pass easily through normal water filtration systems
- Highly resistant to chlorination
- Potential for contamination of municipal water supplies
- Auto infection is possible – sporozoites released from oocysts within the intestine may re-infect the same individual
Name some flagellate protozoa with direct life cycles.
Giardia lamblia (duodenalis)
Trichomonads
Spironucleus (hexamita)
Histomonas
What does giardia lamblia cause?
- Causes diarrhoea in many birds and mammals, including humans
- Zoonosis
- Ingestion of a mature cyst results in infection
- Malabsorptive diarrhoea
Where does giardia lamblia occur?
- Trophozoites attach with suckers to epithelial cells of the small intestine
- The very distinctive trophozoites can sometimes be found in the faeces
- Cysts mature in the colon and faeces
- Excystment occurs in the duodenum to release the trophozoite
- Trophozoite attaching to surface of the epithelial cells blocks absorption
Name the trichomonas.
Trichomonas foetus
Spironucleus (Hexamita)
Histomonas meleagridis
What is trichomonas foetus and how does it present in bulls, cows and cats?
Simple direct life cycle. Sexual transmission.
- Bull – asymptomatic
- Cow – infertility, abortion, embryonic and early foetal death, foetal pyometra and vaginal discharge
- Cats – typhlocolitis
Describe spironucleus meleagridis.
- Small, less than 10 m
- Transmission by faeco-oral route of encysted forms
- Single flagellum
- Migrate in portal circulation
- Direct life cycle possible via faeco-oral route or more usually
What does spironucleus meleagridis cause?
- Catarrhal enteritis in turkey poults and game birds
- Adult birds are asymptomatic carriers
- 6-20um in diameter ‘blackhead’ in turkeys and chickens
- Necrotic lesions in the caecum
- Cause focal necrosis in liver
- Cyanosis of head and wattle due to poor blood supply
What is the species of spironucleus that causes a similar disease in pigeons?
Spironucleus columbae
Describe the life cycle of histomonas meleagridis.
Indirect life cycle via nematode
- Heterakis gallinarum
- Found in caecum
- Histomonas invades nematode
- Histomonas within heterakis eggs
Describe the lifecycle of histomonas meleagridis once eggs have been formed?
- Heterakis eggs passed in faeces
- Birds ingest geterakis eggs or heterakis eggs ingested by and develop within earthworm:
- Bird eats earthworm containing heterakis containing histomonas
- Becomes infected with both parasites simultaneously
- Free range turkeys and chickens
Describe the properties of sarcocystidae.
- Apicomplexa
- Similar to Eimeria but have indirect lifecycles: asexual stages occur in intermediate hosts. Asexual and sexual stages occur in definitive hosts
- Examples: toxoplasma, neospora, sarcocystis
What is toxoplasma gondii?
An apicomplexan protozoan parasite that infects most species of warm blooded animals, including humans, causing the disease toxoplasmosis.
What does toxoplasma gondii cause?
- Cat family/Felidae are the only known definitive hosts for the sexual stages and so are the main reservoirs of infection.
- Toxoplasmosis is an important cause of abortion and foetal abnormality in humans, sheep and goats.
- Also causes significant infections in immunocompromised humans.
- Important zoonosis
Describe the life cycle of toxoplasma gondii in the definitive host.
Domestic cat and other felids.
- Generally become infected by ingesting infected rodents or birds
- Shed oocysts which become infectious to most mammals and birds
- Most commonly infected as kittens
- Shed large numbers of oocysts but only for 1-2 weeks
- Develop immunity
Describe the lifecycle of toxoplasma gondii in intermediate hosts.
Rodents and birds:
- Sprulated oocysts – sporulate in 1-5 days
- Carnivorism/omnivorism or transplacentally (most important in humans, sheep and goats)
What are some accidental hosts of toxoplasma gondii?
Sheep, pigs and other mammals
How does toxoplasma gondii pass to organisms?
Form tissue cysts that can pass to organisms including humans by ingestion, particularly if food is undercooked or if it gets into foetus.
Once in the intermediate host, how does toxoplasma gondii develop?
Tachyzoite - Rapidly multiplying crescent-shaped stage in the development of an acute tissue phase of infection.
Bradyzoite:
- Slow growing, comma shaped forms
- Found in clusters within cysts in the tissues
- Chiefly muscles and the brain, in chronic (latent) toxoplasmosis
Describe tachyzoite movement and multiplication.
- Move by gliding , flexing, undulating and rotating
- No externally visible means of locomotion such as cilia, flagella or pseudopodia
- Motion effected by apical complex
- Rapid multiplication within IH cells
- Lytic cycle, like viruses
Describe the lytic cycle.
- Enter host cell by actively penetrating cell membrane or by phagocytosis
- Multiply asexually repeatedly within host cells
- 2 progeny form within and consume the parent parasite – endodyogeny
- Host cell ruptures when it can no longer support the growth of tachyzoites
How do bradyzoites develop?
- Multiply asexually within host cells by repeated endodyogeny
- Tissue cysts first appear 7-10 days post-infection
- Contain hundreds of bradyzoites
- Within host cell cytoplasm
What are the properties of the cyst wall?
- Composed of host cell and parasite materials
- Resistance to digestion by gastric juice
- Protection from host immune response
Describe the immune response to bradyzoites.
Normally the immune response efficiently prevents the dissemination of these tachyzoites.
In immunocompromised hosts, such reactivation may be unchecked or more frequent.