Important hemoprotozoan diseases of livestock: Challenges in current diagnostics and therapeutics: An update

Abstract

Hemoprotozoan parasites pose a serious threat to the livestock population in terms of mortality, reduced milk yield and lowered draft power. Diagnosis of these diseases often poses a challenging task. Needless to say that impact of disease in health and productivity is huge though a fair economic assessment on the quantum of economic loss associated is yet to be worked out from India. The diagnosis of hemoprotozoan infections largely depends on various laboratory-based diagnostic methods as the clinical manifestations are often inconspicuous and non-specific. Traditional diagnostic methods rely on microscopical demonstration of infective stages in blood or tissue fluids. However, it is laborious, lesser sensitive, and cannot differentiate between morphologically similar organisms. Recent development in the technologies has opened new avenues for improvement in the accurate diagnosis of parasitic infections. Serological tests are simple, fast but lack specificity. With advent of molecular techniques, as DNA hybridization assays, polymerase chain reaction and its modifications ensure the detection of infection in the latent phase of the disease. Nucleic acid-based assays are highly sensitive, free from immunocompetence and can differentiate between morphologically similar parasites. With the advent of newer diagnostics complemented with traditional ones will be of huge help for targeted selective treatment with better chemotherapeutic agents.

A Review of Human Babesiosis and the Laboratory Diagnosis

“…For example, BmSA1, although it is highly sensitive, it is mostly used for serological diagnosis of infected animals, the antigen has not been evaluated for the diagnosis of babesiosis in human. In addition, the specific analysis shows that there is a high cross reaction between the B. bovis and B. bigemina, and also with other Plasmodium falciparum [10].…”

Detection of Trypanosoma evansi in camel abortions (Camelus dromedarius) in Iran using polymerase chain reaction

“…Trypanosoma evansi is a kinetoplastid hemoprotozoan that causes enormous economic losses [1,2] via a disease known as surra [3]. It occurs in different geographical areas and involves a large variety of animals (e.g., camels, domestic animals, buffalo, cattle, horses, and feral dogs) [1,4].…”

“…Its geographical core area is located in the north of the tsetse belt and it transferred to the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, and other Asian countries [5]. Hematophagous flies cause mechanical transmission, which leads to the transmission of the disease to other parts of the world [2]. It should be noted that vampire bats have been identified as carriers of the disease in South America [4,6].…”

Epidemiological, Clinical and Diagnostic Studies on Blood Parasites in Cattle and Buffaloes in ElBehera Provence

“…The clinical signs of bovine Babesiosis are fever, haemoglobinuria and anemia, and in the case of B. bovis infection, fatal cerebral Babesiosis associated with sequestration of infected erythrocytes in capillaries of the brain. Mortality rates are high in susceptible European cattle breeds (Maged et al, 2015 andRanjan et al, (2016).…”