Molecular epidemiology of Cryptosporidium parvum infection

Cryptosporididal infection is one of the most common nonviral causes of diarrhoea in humans and livestock, worldwide. Most clinical infections cause acute transient diarrhoea but persistent infections may develop causing severe chronic, often life-threatening disease, particularly in immunocompromised individuals. The parasite is considered to be the most commonly detected enteropathogen affecting AIDS patients and presently no effective treatment is available. In the absence of effective drugs to treat this ubiquitous infections, the control and clinical management of cryptosporidiosis depends upon rapid, accurate and sensitive identification and characterisation of the aetiological agent, both in clinical specimens and environmental samples. Conventional detection of Cryptosporidium is time consuming, insensitive and generally requires the skills of highly trained operators. Molecular biology has provided the basis for the development of a new generation of diagnostics. The detection and characterisation of isolates of Cryptosporidium using molecular tools are discussed.