Human Babesiosis

Abstract

Human babesiosis is an infectious disease caused by intraerythrocytic protozoa of the genus babesia. The disease is named after Victor Babes, the Hungarian pathologist and microbiologist who identified intraerythrocytic microorganisms as the cause of febrile hemoglobinuria in cattle in 1888.1 Five years later, Theobald Smith and Frederick L. Kilborne identified a tick as the vector for transmission of Babesia bigemina in Texas cattle.2 This seminal observation established for the first time that an arthropod could transmit an infectious agent to a vertebrate host. The first documented human case of babesiosis was not recognized until about a half century later, when . . .