Potential Sabotage of Host Cell Physiology by Apicomplexan Parasites for Their Survival Benefits

Abstract

Plasmodium, Toxoplasma, Cryptosporidium, Babesia, and Theileria are the major apicomplexan parasites affecting humans or animals worldwide. These pathogens represent an excellent example of host manipulators who can overturn host signaling pathways for their survival. They infect different types of host cells and take charge of the host machinery to gain nutrients and prevent itself from host attack. The mechanisms by which these pathogens modulate the host signaling pathways are well studied for Plasmodium, Toxoplasma, Cryptosporidium, and Theileria, except for limited studies on Babesia. Theileria is a unique pathogen taking into account the way it modulates host cell transformation, resulting in its clonal expansion. These parasites majorly modulate similar host signaling pathways, however, the disease outcome and effect is different among them. In this review, we discuss the approaches of these apicomplexan to manipulate the host–parasite clearance pathways during infection, invasion, survival, and egress.

Fussing About Fission: Defining Variety Among Mainstream and Exotic Apicomplexan Cell Division Modes

“…At the furthest extreme are several bovine-infecting Theileria spp. of which the schizonts in the white bloods that trigger transformation of their lymphocyte host cells (i.e., leukemia) resulting in division and expansion of the parasites schizont stage along with their host cell (Luder et al, 2009;Chakraborty et al, 2017). As remarked throughout, the number of daughter cells per division round in each life stage is largely genetically controlled, but the details on the controls are just starting to emerge.…”

“…(Jalovecka et al, 2018) it has been shown that sporozoite formation progresses without karyokinesis to produce large polyploid nuclei while budding is from the cortex. We note that Plasmodium sporozoites infect hepatocytes wherein they divide by schizogony and manipulate the hepatocytes to expand their size, whereas Theileria sporozoites infect white blood cells, replicate by schizogony (Shaw and Tilney, 1992) and trigger white blood expansion as well as division (i.e., transformation, which basically is leukemia (Luder et al, 2009;Chakraborty et al, 2017), which contrasts with Babesia sporozoites as they directly infect red blood cells. "epg with kk" means "endopolygeny with karyokinesis," in case of select Babesia spp., "k.a."…”

A Real-Time PCR based assay for determining parasite to host ratio and parasitaemia in the clinical samples of Bovine Theileriosis

“…The transformed T. annulata infected bovine leukocyte cells can be cultured in vitro for an infinite time in the parasite-specific culture medium. Currently, an attenuated T. annulata schizont stage vaccine is available in India for controlling the disease 12 , 13 . The diagnosis of theileriosis heavily relies on the microscopy, where Giemsa stain is used to check for Theileria infected multinucleated host cells (Koch’s bodies) and the piroplasm stage in the blood smear 14 .…”

Dehydration enhances cellular and humoral immunity in a mesic snake community

“…The Hepatozoon species that we quantified is an obligate intracellular parasite. Infections with such parasites typically result in the release of cytokines, eosinophilia, and the production of immunoglobulin E, all of which are components of the humoral response (Chakraborty et al, 2017; Frölich, Entzeroth, & Wallach, 2012). One other study exploring the relationship between parasite load and humoral immunity in a snake (water python: Ujvari & Madsen, 2006) similarly found a negative correlation between parasite load and humoral immunity.…”