Parasitic Diseases

Worldwide, the numbers of people suffering and dying from parasitic diseases are overwhelming, with more than 100 million cases and 1 million deaths each year from malaria alone. Despite the magnitude of the problem and the importance of the parasites that cause opportunistic infections among persons with HIV/AIDS, medical schools in the United States, Canada, and other developed countries consistently reduce the amount of time spent on parasitic diseases in the curricu lum. As a result most medical students receive limited information about these diseases, and are inadequately prepared to diagnose or treat them as physicians. This problem is too large to be resolved within the time available for parasitology in the medical school curriculum; at most, students can be acquainted with the salient features of the medically important parasites. Likewise, the traditional isolation of parasitology from the rest of the curriculum (consistent with its exclu sion from most microbiology texts) is another unresolved problem. In my opinion, this is why most physicians are unable to think about the differential diagnosis of parasitic diseases in the same way that they routinely balance the probabilities of malignancy, cardiovascular, renal, and pulmonary disease vs other infectious diseases. To resolve these problems, relevant paradigms from parasitology must be used in the teaching of cell biology, molecular biology, genetics, and immu nology.

Worldwide, the numbers of people suffering and dying from parasitic diseases are overwhelming, with more than 100 million cases and 1 million deaths each year from malaria alone.

I. Nematodes.- 1. Enterobius vermicularis (Linnaeus 1758).- 2. Trichuris trichiura (Linnaeus 1771).- 3. Ascaris lumbricoides (Linnaeus 1758).- 4. Hookworms: Necator americanus (Stiles 1902) and Ancylostoma duodenale (Dubini 1843).- 5. Strongyloides sp.: Strongloides stercoralis (Bavay 1876) and Strongyloides fuelleborni (Von Linstow 1905).- 6. Trichinella spiralis (Railliet 1896).- 7. Lymphatic Filariae: Wuchereria bancrofti (Cobbold 1877) and Brugia malayi (Brug 1927).- 8. Onchocerca volvulus (Leuckart 1893).- 9. Loa loa (Cobbold 1864).- 10. Dracunculus medinensis (Linnaeus 1758).- 11. Aberrant Nematode Infections.- 12. Nematode Infections of Minor Medical Importance.- II Cestodes.- 13. Taenia saginata (Goeze 1782).- 14. Taenia solium (Linnaeus 1758).- 15. Diphyllobothrium latum (Linnaeus 1758).- 16. Larval Tapeworms.- 17. Tapeworms of Minor Medical Importance.- III. Trematodes.- 18. Schistosomes: Schistosoma mansoni (Sambon 1907), Schistosoma japonicum (Katsurada 1904), Schistosoma haematobium (Bilharz 1852).- 19. Clonorchis sinensis (Loos 1907).- 20. Fasciola hepatica (Linnaeus 1758).- 21. Paragonimus westermani (Kerbert 1878).- 22. Trematodes of Minor Medical Importance.- IV. Protozoa.- 23. Trichomonas vaginalis (Donne 1836).- 24. Giardia lamblia (Stiles 1915).- 25. Entamoeba histolytica (Schaudinn 1903).- 26. Balantidium coli (Malmsten 1857).- 27. Toxoplasma gondii (Nicolle and Manceaux 1908).- 28. Cryptosporidium sp. and Cyclospora sp.- 29. Malaria: Plasmodium falciparum (Welch 1898), Plasmodium vivax (Grassi and Filetti 1889), Plasmodium ovale (Stephens 1922),Plasmodium malariae (Laveran 1881).- 30. Trypanosoma cruzi (Chagas 1909).- 31. African Trypanosomes: Trypanosoma brucei gambiense (Dutton 1902) and Trypanosoma bruceirhodesiense (Stephens and Fantham 1910).-32. Leishmania tropica (Wright 1903) and Leishmania mexicana (Biagi 1953).- 33. Leishmania braziliensis (Vianna 1911).- 34. Leishmania donovani (Ross 1903).- 35. Pneumocystis carinii (Delanoe and Delanoe 1912).- 36. Protozoans of Minor Medical Importance.- 37. Nonpathogenic Protozoa.- V. Arthropods.- 38. Insects.- 39. Arachnids.- 40. Arthropods of Minor Medical Importance.- Appendix I: Therapeutic Recommendations (Reprinted from TheMedical Letter).- Appendix II: Procedures Suggested for Examining Clinical Specimens for Agents of Parasitic Diseases.- Appendix III: Laboratory Diagnostic Methods.- Appendix IV: Diagnostic Atlas of Nematodes, Cestodes, Trematodes, and Protozoa.