Word: protozoans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
TOXOPLASMOSIS A big problem for pregnant women (it can produce miscarriages and birth defects), toxoplasmosis is caused by a protozoan that can be picked up by eating undercooked meat or by contact with infected cat feces more than...
...Protozoan...
Part of the danger comes from pests that carry such illnesses as malaria, dengue fever and Lyme disease, which are expanding their ranges from the tropics toward the poles or to higher altitudes. Parasites like warm weather too: a tiny protozoan that breeds between the abdominal scales of monarch butterflies is just one example...
...soon became apparent that the carrier was the female Phlebotomus orientalis sand fly, which passes the deadly protozoan to humans in an unusual manner (see box). The tiny insect, which cannot fly very high or far, inhabits the vast, red acacia forests, where it bites its victims in order to get protein-rich blood to develop its eggs. When female sand flies bit people driven by war or famine into the forests from areas where kala-azar was already endemic, the flies picked up the disease themselves, ready to be passed...
...next big epidemic in Sudan will probably be sleeping sickness. The African trypanosome parasite that causes it is a distant cousin of the kala-azar protozoan. Infection rates in some villages in Western Equatoria, just south of the western Upper Nile, are already running at 20%. Experts question whether the disease can be treated without hospitalization--an option that, because of the large numbers infected, is out of the question. It is the kind of impossible field-medical problem that is tailor-made for Jill Seaman, and she has already indicated that she would like to get involved...