Current Advances in Detection and Treatment of Babesiosis

Abstract

Babesiosis is a disease with a world-wide distribution affecting many species of mammals principally cattle and man. The major impact occurs in the cattle industry where bovine babesiosis has had a huge economic effect due to loss of meat and beef production of infected animals and death. Nowadays to those costs there must be added the high cost of tick control, disease detection, prevention and treatment. In almost a century and a quarter since the first report of the disease, the truth is: there is no a safe and efficient vaccine available, there are limited chemotherapeutic choices and few low-cost, reliable and fast detection methods. Detection and treatment of babesiosis are important tools to control babesiosis. Microscopy detection methods are still the cheapest and fastest methods used to identify Babesia parasites although their sensitivity and specificity are limited. Newer immunological methods are being developed and they offer faster, more sensitive and more specific options to conventional methods, although the direct immunological diagnoses of parasite antigens in host tissues are still missing. Detection methods based on nucleic acid identification and their amplification are the most sensitive and reliable techniques available today; importantly, most of those methodologies were developed before the genomics and bioinformatics era, which leaves ample room for optimization. For years, babesiosis treatment has been based on the use of very few drugs like imidocarb or diminazene aceturate. Recently, several pharmacological compounds were developed and evaluated, offering new options to control the disease. With the complete sequence of the Babesia bovis genome and the B. bigemina genome project in progress, the post-genomic era brings a new light on the development of diagnosis methods and new chemotherapy targets. In this review, we will present the current advances in detection and treatment of babesiosis in cattle and other animals, with additional reference to several apicomplexan parasites.

Clofazimine Inhibits the Growth of Babesia and Theileria Parasites In Vitro and In Vivo

“…However, diminazene aceturate does not completely eliminate parasites from hosts, which can then lead to a relapse of disease in treated animals and produce side effects, including tissue damage at the injection site, restlessness, and colic (5). In the present study, B. microti was not observed on blood smears prepared from clofazimine-treated mice on day 40 postinfection.…”

“…B. microti infection is detected worldwide in humans, especially in the United States, with malaria-like clinical signs (2). Several drugs, including diminazene aceturate, that have been used for years have proven increasingly ineffective due to their toxicity and the development of resistance (5,6). Therefore, the development of new drugs with low toxicity to animal hosts but with high efficacy against parasites is urgently desired.…”

Direct blood PCR detection of Babesia bigemina and its effect on haematological and biochemical profile in crossbred cattle of eastern Haryana

“…al., 2010). On the contrary, PCR based technique has been proven to be very sensitive in detecting B. bovis and B. bigemina infected carrier cattle (Calder, 1996;Salem et al, 1999;Guido et al, 2002, Mosqueda et al, 2012. The present study was aimed at rapid diagnosis of Babesia bigemina in naturally infected crossbred cows and to determine its effect on haematobiochemical profile of host animals.…”

Toward the discovery of inhibitors of babesipain-1, a Babesia bigemina cysteine protease: in vitro evaluation, homology modeling and molecular docking studies

“…Accordingly, the global score of 0.751 reflects the reliability of the babesipain-1 model. Furthermore, the quality of the model can be compared to reference structures of high resolution obtained from X-ray a Values correspond to the percentages of residues that are located in the most favorable, additionally allowed, generously allowed and disallowed regions, respectively b The first value corresponds to the QMEAN global score, while the value between parenthesis refers to the QMEAN Z-score c RMSD values of bebesipain-1 model compared to the 3D structures of the templates used for the alignment (listed in the same order as column 2) crystallography analysis through QMEAN Z-score, where a value of 0 is the average value for a good model [35]. According to Benkert et al [35], QMEAN Z-score provides an estimation of the ''degrees of nativeness'' of the structural features observed in a model and indicates if the model has a quality comparable to experimental structures.…”

“…The major impact occurs in the cattle industry, where bovine babesiosis has had a huge economic effect [2]. One of the most important species that causes babesiosis in cattle is Babesia bigemina, which is distributed wherever Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10822-013-9682-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.…”