A male patient is described with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) who developed chronic keratoconjunctivitis and chronic sinusitis due to infection with the microsporidian Encephalitozoon cuniculi. Diagnosis was confirmed by electron microscopic examination of conjunctival epithelial cells and nasal polypectomy specimens. Treatment with propamidine isethionate 0.1% (Brolene) eye drops...

Microsporidians are a group of emerging pathogens typically associated with chronic diarrhea in immunocompromised individuals. The number of reports of infections with these organisms and the disseminated pathology is growing as diagnostic tools become more readily available. However, little is known about the innate immune response induced by and generated against these parasites. Using a cocu...

Presently, the two most commonly used drugs for treating microsporidiosis in persons with AIDS are albendazole and fumagillin. Albendazole is effective for treating disseminated infections due to Encephalitozoon spp. but is variably effective against Enterocytozoon bieneusi infections. Fumagillin is highly effective when used topically to treat ocular infections with Encephalitozoon hellem or E...

INTRODUCTION Microsporidia spp. are ubiquitous and infect a wide variety of intervertebrates and vertebrates, including humans. Pulmonary microsporidiosis, characterized by nonspecific symptoms like fever, cough and dyspnea, is often overlooked in the differential diagnosis of pulmonary infections in immunsupressed patients. In this study, we aimed to determine the prevalence of pulmonary micro...

BACKGROUND Microsporidia are intracellular parasites that are highly-derived relatives of fungi. They have compacted genomes and, despite a high rate of sequence evolution, distantly related species can share high levels of gene order conservation. To date, only two species have been analysed in detail, and data from one of these largely consists of short genomic fragments. It is therefore diff...

Down-regulation of the immune response in aging individuals puts this population at a potential risk against infectious agents. In-depth studies conducted in humans and mouse models have demonstrated that with increasing age, the T cell immune response against pathogens is compromised and response to vaccinations is subdued. In the present study, using a mouse model, we demonstrate that older a...

The proper prediction of the gene catalogue of an organism is essential to obtain a representative snapshot of its overall lifestyle, especially when it is not amenable to culturing. Microsporidia are obligate intracellular, sometimes hard to culture, eukaryotic parasites known to infect members of every animal phylum. To date, sequencing and annotation of microsporidian genomes have revealed a...

The ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer sequences of 13 unrelated Encephalitozoon intestinalis isolates obtained from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients with intestinal microsporidiosis were analyzed by gene amplification and DNA sequencing. Among these isolates, we found only one genetic lineage which suggests that E. intestinalis may have a clonal distribution in HIV-i...