Research Progress on Opportunistic Parasitic Infections

The incidence of opportunistic parasitic infections is increasing as a result of the growing population with immune deficiency. Currently, studies on opportunistic parasitic infections are limited by the lack of animal models, due to the limited biological knowledge on the opportunistic parasitic pathogens as well as the small number of studies on species identification and typing, epidemiologic status, as well as the source and route of infection. The prevalence of HIV has promoted the research and understanding of opportunistic parasitic infections, which, in turn, has greatly reduced the morbidity and mortality of opportunistic infections. However, there still exists a bottleneck for the control and prevention of infectious diseases, i.e., the lack of sensitive and specific diagnostic methods and effective therapy, due to the complicated clinical manifestations and insufficient notification by clinical physicians. Supported by accumulating basic research, the discovery of diagnostic and therapeutic molecular targets is the key to overcome these problems.