Cacciò Simone M
Department of Infectious Diseases, European Union Reference Laboratory for Parasites, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena, 299, Rome 00161, Italy.
Acta Trop. 2018 Aug;184:73-77. doi: 10.1016/j.actatropica.2017.06.029. Epub 2017 Jul 8.
The flagellated protozoan Dientamoeba fragilis is one of the most commonly diagnosed parasite of the human gut, with a global distribution. Nevertheless, essential aspects of its biology remain incompletely understood or controversial, most notably life cycle, host range, transmission routes and the ability to cause disease. Molecular epidemiologic studies are also scarce, and limited by the lack of informative genotyping tools. To date, two D. fragilis genotypes (1 and 2) are recognized, with a strong predominance of genotype 1 in both humans and few animal hosts. Recent studies have shown that a very low level of genetic variability characterizes parasite isolates collected in various geographic areas and from both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases. This has raised the hypothesis D. fragilis may be a clonal organism. The recent availability of transcriptome data should greatly assist the development of markers useful to understand genetic diversity of D. fragilis at the population level.
鞭毛虫类原生动物脆弱双核阿米巴是人类肠道中最常被诊断出的寄生虫之一，在全球范围内均有分布。然而，其生物学的关键方面仍未得到充分理解或存在争议，最显著的是生命周期、宿主范围、传播途径以及致病能力。分子流行病学研究也很匮乏，且因缺乏有效的基因分型工具而受到限制。迄今为止，已识别出两种脆弱双核阿米巴基因型（1型和2型），其中1型在人类和少数动物宿主中占主导地位。最近的研究表明，在不同地理区域以及有症状和无症状病例中收集的寄生虫分离株的遗传变异性非常低。这引发了关于脆弱双核阿米巴可能是克隆生物的假说。转录组数据的近期可得性应极大地有助于开发用于理解脆弱双核阿米巴在种群水平上遗传多样性的标记。
