Protozoa

• Amoebas are a type of protozoa that move by extending their cytoplasm into pseudopods.
• Protozoans are unicellular, eukaryotic chemoheterotrophs that inhabit water and soil, feeding upon bacteria and small particulate nutrients.
• The vegetative form of protozoans is the trophozoite, which is the feeding and growing stage.
• Trichinella spiralis causes the disease trichinellosis.
• Trichinella spiralis is passed to humans through the ingestion of larvae.
• The definitive host site for Trichinella spiralis is humans, pigs, and other mammals, specifically the small intestine (muscles).
• Protozoans can be either unicellular or multicellular organisms, taken in by animals or integrated in plants, which when eaten by man can cause diseases.
• Protozoans are transmitted through the oral-anal pathway.
• Mastigophora is a classification of protozoans that includes flagellates.
• Ciliophora is a classification of protozoans that includes ciliates.
• Sarcodina is a classification of protozoans that includes amoeboid and have no distinct appendages but forms the pseudopod to move.
• All organisms require an intermediate host, with man being the primary host.
• Symptoms of infection include diarrhea, blood in stool if they cause the gut to be injured and ulcerated.
• Holozoic nutrition is when energy and organic building blocks are obtained by ingesting and then digesting other organisms or pieces of other organisms, including blood and decaying organic matter.
• Pinocytosis is a type of holozoic nutrition where nutrient materials are ingested and enclosed in a membrane to form a food vacuole.
• Archaezoa are eukaryotes that lack mitochondria with a unique organelle called mitosome, remnant of mitochondria from their ancestors, live as symbionts in the digestive tracts of animals, typically spindle-shaped with flagella projecting from the front end, most have two or more flagella.
• Examples of Archaezoa include Giardia lamblia and Trichomonas vaginalis.
• Trichomoniasis is the most common curable STD in young, sexually active women.
• Microsporidian are heterotrophic, amitochondriate, highly resistant pyriform spore, live as symbiotrophs to animals, lack mitochondria and microtubules, cause chronic diarrhea, and are transmitted through the oral-anal pathway.
• Giardia lamblia is a cyst with an ellipsoid, thick walled trophozoite, immature with two nuclei and mature with four nuclei, often resembling an old man’s eyeglass.
• Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense causes East African sleeping sickness, a short-term (acute) illness that may last several weeks to months.
• Trypanosoma brucei gambiense causes West African sleeping sickness, a chronic infection that can last for years.
• HELMINTHS are parasitic flatworms that belong to the Phylum Platyhelminthes, parasitic roundworms that belong to Phylum Nematoda, possess digestive, circulatory, nervous, excretory and reproductive system, spend part of their lives in humans, have no organ of locomotion, move by muscular contraction and relaxation, maybe monoecious/dioecious, and their outer covering is known as cuticle/integument.
• Trypanosoma cruzi causes Chagas disease, a skin lesion called chagoma.
• The definitive host for Trypanosoma cruzi is the kissing or reduviid bug, mostly found in Central and South America, rarely in North America.
• Balantidium coli has a trophozoite and cyst stage, with the cyst having two nuclei and the trophozoite having a long macronucleus.
• Entamoeba histolytica has a trophozoite and cyst stage, with the cyst having one nucleus and the trophozoite having a hyaline, fingerlike pseudopod.
• Leishmania tropica causes oriental sore or Baghdad boil.
• The definitive host for Trypanosoma brucei is the tsetse fly.
• Leishmania brasiliensis causes mucocutaneous leishmaniasis.
• Leishmania causes leishmaniasis, transmitted by sandflies or phlebotome female fly, often infecting the skin so it is known as cutaneous leishmaniasis.
• Entamoeba coli has a trophozoite and cyst stage, with the cyst distinguished by one nucleus and the trophozoite by wide and tapered pseudopodia.
• Leishmania donovani, the deadliest, causes kala-azar due to invasion of the spleen, liver and lymph nodes.
• Amoebozoans are single-celled, shape shifting cells, with cyst and trophozoite forms, reproduce by binary fission, locomote by pseudopodia (false feet) blunt and finger-like called lobopodia, and hunt and eat bacteria by phagocytosis.
• The intermediate host of Plasmodium sp. is the human, and the definitive host is the Anopheles mosquito.
• The mechanism of infection of Plasmodium sp. is through a bite from an infected Anopheles mosquito or blood transfusion.
• Hemoflagellates are blood parasites transmitted by bites of blood-feeding insects, found in the circulatory system of the bitten host, and include the species of Trypanosoma.
• Symptoms of Plasmodium sp. include influenza-like symptoms.
• Balantidium coli is a parasite that is only ciliate that is a human parasite and is the causative agent of a rare but severe type of dysentery.
• Babesia is a malaria-like parasite that causes the disease babesiosis, with the definitive host being the Ixodes diminini tick and the intermediate host being humans.