What is it about?
Cryptosporidium is an intestinal parasite that can cause severe, prolonged diarrhoea in people with AIDS. We studied nine AIDS patients with cryptosporidiosis, classified as severe, moderate or mild. From old stool samples preserved in formalin we extracted good-quality DNA and sequenced a parasite gene (GP60) that distinguishes subtypes. One patient had C. hominis and eight had C. parvum. Patients with severe disease carried C. parvum subtypes of the IIc family, whereas those with moderate or mild disease had subtypes of the IIa family.
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Why is it important?
Our findings suggest that the genetic subtype of Cryptosporidium may influence how severe the disease is in immunocompromised patients. We also showed that archived formalin-fixed stool samples can be used for molecular studies, opening the door to retrospective research on stored specimens.
Perspectives
I enjoyed this collaboration between clinicians and parasitologists. Linking the clinical picture of each patient to the genetics of the parasite is exactly the kind of translational work I find most stimulating.
Professor Stefano Di Bella
Universita degli Studi di Trieste
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Cases of cryptosporidiosis co-infections in AIDS patients: a correlation between clinical presentation and GP60 subgenotype lineages from aged formalin-fixed stool samples, Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, July 2011, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1179/1364859411y.0000000025.
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