Definition
Microsporidia are a group of intracellular protists related to Fungi that can cause chronic diarrhea in patients with AIDS, but, depending on the particular species involved, can also infect many other organ systems with keratoconjunctivitis being a common nongastrointestinal manifestation.
Introduction
The microsporidia are intracellular pathogens that infect both invertebrate and vertebrate hosts (Weiss and Becnel 2014). Microsporidia have a unique invasion organelle, the polar tube, that punctures host cells during invasion allowing transmission of this pathogen (Fig. 1). Given the wide host range of these organisms it is not surprising that they have been identified as human pathogens as they infect almost all animal phyla, including other protists. They were historically considered “primitive” protozoa; however, recent studies suggest that these organisms are related to the Fungi, either as a basal branch of the Fungi or as a sister group (Keeling 2009; Weiss and...
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References
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Acknowledgments
The work was supported by NIH grants (to LMW) AI093315 and AI093220.
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Weiss, L.M., Weiss, O.S., Ludington, J.G., Ward, H.D. (2016). Microsporidiosis. In: Hope, T., Stevenson, M., Richman, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of AIDS. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9610-6_451-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9610-6_451-1
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