Entamoeba moshkovskii infections in Sydney, Australia

Abstract

Entamoeba moshkovskii is considered to be a free-living ameba, which is morphologically similar, but biochemically and genetically different, to Entamoeba histolytica and Entamoeba dispar. However, recent studies have suggested that E. moshkovskii may be a "potential" pathogen, with infections giving rise to diarrhea and other intestinal disorders. Microscopy and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) targeting the 18S ribosomal (r) DNA was performed on fecal samples collected from patients presenting with diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders (test group), as well as fecal samples collected from healthy controls (control group). Of the 110 patients microscopically positive for the Entamoeba species, 55/110 (50%) samples were positive for E. moshkovskii in the test group of patients presenting with diarrhea. E. moshkovskii was the only pathogen detected (including bacteria or viruses) in 3/55 (5.5%) of the test group of patients presenting with diarrhea and abdominal pain. The DNA of E. moshkovskii was not detected in the fecal samples collected from the healthy controls. These results suggest that E. moshkovskii may not simply be a commensal of the human gastrointestinal tract and provides evidence for E. moshkovskii as a "potential" pathogen in the case of diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders. Further studies are needed to determine the role of E. moshkovskii in causing diarrheal diseases in our population.

Entamoeba histolytica

“…Parija and Khaimar (2005) reported gastrointestinal symptoms in Indian patients infected by the association of E. dispar with E. moshkovskii. A similar pathogenic potential was reported by Fotedar et al (2008) and Pritt and Clark (2008).…”

“…The fact is that infection with E. moshkovski is not uncommon and has a higher prevalence than infection with E. histolytica. The same was found in India (Parija and Kairnar, 2005), in homosexual patients with gastrointestinal symptoms in Australia (Fotedar et al, 2008), in two healthy adults in Tunisia (Ben Ayed et al, 2008a), and in a cohort of HIV-suspected or confirmed patients in Tanzania (Beck et al, 2008). All these studies also highlighted the important prevalence of E. moshkovski mono infection.…”

Differential diagnosis of Entamoeba spp. in gastrointestinal disorder patients in Khorramabad, Iran

“…But it is not clear E. moshkovskii caused the observed symptoms. Some other studies have proposed E. moshkovskii to be likely an entropathogen in patients presenting with gastrointestinal symptoms (Foteder et al, 2008;Nazemalhosseini-Mojarad et al, 2010a;Parija and Khairnar, 2005). out of 3,825 stool samples were collected from patients with gastrointestinal disorders in Iran, 2 E. moshkovskii (3.45%), and one mixed E. dispar/E.…”

“…The organism is mainly free-living amoeba that rarely infects humans (Clark and Diamond, 1991;Clark and Diamond, 1997). A high incidence of E. moshkovskii infections was reported in stool specimens from Bangladesh and Australia and Turkey (Ali et al, 2003;Foteder et al, 2008;Tanyuksel et al, 2007). Three E. moshkovskii infections and one simultaneous infection with E. moshkovskii and E. dispar have also been reported in Iran (Nazemalhosseini-Mojarad et al, 2010a;Solaymani-Mohammadi et al, 2006).…”

Laboratory diagnosis of amebiasis in a sample of students from southeastern Brazil and a comparison of microscopy with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for screening of infections with Entamoeba sp.

“…E. moshkovskii, another morphologically indistinguishable human parasitic Entamoeba, has not been mentioned, nor has it been considered a contributor to prevalence fi gures in endemic areas 11 . Molecular techniques that can differentiate all studied species of Entamoeba, including E. moshkovskii, in human specimens have already been reported in Italy, Bangladesh, India, Australia, Turkey, Iran, and Malaysia [31][32][33][34][35][36] .…”