Trypanosoma lewisi, the potentially lethal trypanosome

Abstract

Parasites that possess the ability to be infectious to humans are often closely watched in order to keep medicines abreast with the mutations of parasites in hopes of preventing these organisms of becoming totally resistant to treatment. Some of the most detrimental parasites belong to the genus Trypanosoma such as: Trypanosoma cruzi, Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense, and Trypanosoma brucei gambiense. With these parasites being the cause of Chagas disease and African Trypanosomiasis the predominately rat-dwelling parasite Trypanosoma lewisi has went unnoticed due to previous beliefs that this parasite is rat-specific and posed no serious threat to human life. However, recent studies show that in comparison to the other Trypansoma species T. lewisi possesses the ability to resist up to 90% of normal human serum whereas the other species can only survive the serum in extremely low concentrations (.0001%) or lack the ability to survive at all. T. lewisi isolated from Thailand and China have proven to share the same resistance to normal human serum and reports of human infection by T. lewisi are on the rise.