Monday, September 14, 2009

Case of the Week 84

The following images are from a peripheral blood smear from a 93 year old male from Connecticut. No travel history is received.





6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Bobbi,

Looks like P facliparum (early rings) trophs to me. Probably a trick question though!

Chris

Anonymous said...

Considering it's from my neck of the woods, I'm going to guess Babesia. That last picture kind of looked like the tetrad formation.

-Doreen

sandy said...

Mixed infection of Plasmodium - Pl.vivax and Pl.falciparum.

marshall said...

Babesia microti.

Salbrent said...

How do you speciate Babesia species? ex microti

There are 100 species

ParasiteGal said...

Salbrent has a good point. The only way to definitely speciation Babesia is through molecular means, such as PCR. B. microti is the main species in the United States, but we now know that there is a WA-1 strain (described in Washington State), and most recently, a MO-1 strain (from Missouri). The latter is more genetically similar to the European species, B. divergens, then it is to B. microti, and may eventually get its own species name.