BABESIA (Blood Parasite)
Babesia is a protozoan parasite of the blood that causes a hemolytic disease known as Babesiosis. There are over 100 species of Babesiaidentified; however only a handful have been documented as pathogenic in humans. In the United States, Babesia microti is the most common strain associated with humans with other species infecting cattle, livestock and occasionally domestic animals. People who contract Babesiosis suffer from malaria-like symptoms. As a result malaria is a common misdiagnosis for the disease. ClassificationBabesia is a protozoan parasite of which Babesia microti and Babesia divergens are the two species to most frequently infect humans. Infections from other species of Babesia have been documented in humans but are not habitually seen. Babesiosis is also known as Piroplasmosis. Due to historical misclassifications, this protozoan was labeled with many names that are no longer used. Common names of the disease include Texas Cattle Fever, Redwater Fever, Tick Fever, and Nantucket Fever. HistoryFor centuries, babesiosis was known to be a serious illness for wild and domesticated animals, especially cattle. Victor Babeş, a Romanian scientist who first documented the disease in Romania in 1888, described symptoms of a severe hemolytic illness seen uniquely in cattle and sheep. Although he identified the causative agent in 1888, he incorrectly believed it to be due to a bacterium that he named Haematococcus bovis. In 1893 Americans Theobald Smith and Fred Kilborne identified the parasite as the cause of Texas Cattle Fever, the same disease described by Babeş. Smith and Kilborne also identified the tick as the agent of transmission, a discovery that first introduced the concept of arthropods functioning as disease vectors. Long believed to be a disease that only affected non-human mammals, it wasn’t until 1957 that the first case of babesiosis was seen in humans. The first case was observed in a splenectomized patient as were all people diagnosed up until 1969. The first case of babesiosis seen in a non-splenectomized patient proved that the protozoan parasite was pathogenic to all people.
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