ABSTRACT
References .............................................................................................................................................. 144
Amoebiasis, an invasive intestinal or extraintestinal infection caused by the protozoan parasite Entamoeba histolytica, is responsible for approximately 100,000 deaths annually. It is regarded as the fourth leading cause of death due to a protozoan infection after malaria, Chagas’ disease, and leishmaniasis and the third cause of morbidity in this organism group after malaria and trichomoniasis.1 The earliest mention of amoebiasis as a bloody, mucus diarrhea was possibly found in the Sanskrit document Bhrigu Samhita written about 1000 BC.2 As amoebiasis became widespread in the developed world, there were numerous records of “bloody ux” in Europe, Asia, Persia, and Greece in the Middle Ages.3 The disease appears to have been introduced into the New World by Europeans sometime in the sixteenth century.4 James Annersley (1828) rst recognized the relationship between dysentery and liver abscess, which was thoroughly described later by William Budd (1857). Losch discovered amoeba in 1875 and also established the relationship between the parasite and the disease.2 Schaudinn (1903) named E. histolytica, and Craig (1905) conrmed the ndings of Schaudinn, and nally the pathogenicity of these amoebae was proven by the experiments conducted by Walker and Sellards (1913). Entamoeba dispar, an amoeba morphologically similar to E. histolytica, which also colonizes the human gut with no invasive potential, was recognized as a separate species in 1925.5 Together, E. histolytica and E. dispar infect about 10% of the world’s population.1 Another species, Entamoeba moshkovskii, also has considerable prevalence in E. histolytica endemic countries.6
