Control of parasites

Details Control of parasites Control of parasites

1996-12-20

1999-01-26

Degen, Nancy

Chemistry: molecular biology and microbiology

Treatment of micro-organisms or enzymes with electrical or...

Modification of viruses

435 691, 435 692, 435410, 435412, 514 2, 800205, C12N 1563, C12P 2102, A01H 106, A61K 3816

Patent

active

058637753

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to the control of parasites. More particularly the invention relates to the prophylactic and curative control of animal parasites, such as parasitic nematodes, other helminths, protozoa and all parasites possessing proteases.
Parasites are organisms which are physiologically dependent on one or more host(s) in a relationship which is generally obligatory and where the organism lives at the expense of its host(s). If bacteria, viruses, fungi and rickettsias are excluded, parasites which infect animals (including humans) can be divided into three principal groups: protozoa, helminths (both of which are endoparasitic) and arthropods which are both endo and ectoparasitic. Parasites infect all species of domestic and wild animals as well as humans. Humans are host to over one hundred species of parasite.
Protozoa are unicellular, although they may contain more than one nucleus, and are covered in a plasma membrane as found in other cells. There are at least 45,000 species of protozoa although not all of these are parasitic. Parasitic protozoa include Plasmodium (the causative agent of the disease malaria in humans) which is blood and liver dwelling and transmitted by mosquitoes. At least 300 million people suffer from malaria in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Babesia spp are transmitted by ticks and live in the blood of vertebrates; serious disease is caused in domestic animals, particularly ruminants. Theileria spp. are found in the lymphoid tissue and blood of ruminants and cause diseases including East Coast Fever in cattle. Trypanosoma spp, which cause sleeping sickness in humans and domestic animals, particularly in Africa, mostly live in the blood and tissue fluids of the host and are transmitted by the bite of the tsetse flies. One exception is T. cruzi which causes Chagas disease in South and Central America where it infects up to 20 million people. This is transmitted by triatomid bugs. Leishmania tropica and L. major, spread by sandflies, cause a disfiguring disease, cutaneous leishmaniasis, in humans, while L. donavani causes kala azar which may be both disfiguring and life threatening.
It is thought that 100 million people suffer acute or chronic effects of amoebic dysentry and the disease may be responsible for the death of up to 100,000 people per year; amoebic dysentry is due to Entaamoeba histolytica an intestinal protozoan parasite. The species is cosmopolitan but in many parts of the tropics and subtropics the prevalence is more than 50% and dysentry is common.
Coccidia cause coccidiosis, a common and serious disease of domestic animals; Eimeria tenella which is found in the intestinal cecae of chickens is the best known example, but there are thought to be several important species of coccidia and they occur in other fowl as well as ruminants. Crowded conditions found in batteries can lead to massive infection, which may be severe or fatal. Such is the importance of this group that domestic chickens are maintained on a diet which includes prophylactic drugs (coccidiostats). The US Department of Agriculture estimates that in 1986 $80 million was lost to US farmers in added labour costs and medicated feeds to control coccidiosis. Another coccidian, Toxoplasma, is an intracellular parasite of many tissues particularly in humans and sheep; stillbirths, spontaneous abortions or disability in the new born may result from infection of the foetus. Toxoplasmosis is responsible for one third of all sheep abortions and causes congenital abnormalities in children at the rate of 1 in 2,000 births in the U.K. Toxoplasmosis has been implicated as a cause of death in immunodeficient patients.
Giardia intestinalis which lives in the small intestine of humans and Hexamita meleagridis in fowl cause highly contagious, diarrhoeal diseases. Infection depends on ingestion of infected water. Giardiasis outbreaks occur frequently in the USA. Trichomonas spp cause a number of disorders of the genito-urinary and digestive system of humans and domestic animals.
Helminth parasites are worms; th

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Nussenzweig et al Malaria Vaccins: Multiple Targets Science 265 1381-1383, 1994.
Masoud, Sameer A., "Expression of a Cysteine Proteinase Inhibitor (oryzacystatin-I) in Transgenic Tobacco Plants," Plant Molecular Biology, 21:655-663, 1993.
Palowski, Asacariasis In: Tropical and Geographical Medicine, Warren & Mahmoud, eds, 2nd Edn., McGraw-Hill, New York (1990).
McKee, Nitrogen Metabolism in Plants, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1962).

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