Cryptosporidiosis in patients with HIV/AIDS

Introduction Cryptosporidium spp. are intestinal protozoan parasites of the phylum Apicomplexa, which cause diarrheal disease in humans worldwide (reviewed in [1–6]). In immunocompetent individuals, infection with this parasite may be asymptomatic or cause a self-limiting diarrheal illness. However, in immunocompromised patients such as those with HIV/AIDS Cryptosporidium spp. may cause severe, chronic and possibly fatal diarrhea and wasting. Although Cryptosporidium was discovered in 1907, it was not till 1976 that the first human cases of cryptosporidiosis were reported and not till the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s that this parasite became widely recognized as a human pathogen (reviewed in [4,7,8]). Indeed, cryptosporidiosis was one of the original AIDS-defining illnesses and as such was associated with an…