Ask A Scientist© Molecular Biology Archive

>
> > >  name       John
> > >  status     student
> > >  age        20s
>
> > >  Question - I am working on a senior seminar
> > project. Question:
> > >
> > >Is there such a protozoan as "Giardia gingivalis"?
> > I cannot seem to find
> > >anything on this at all. If not, do you have other
> > suggestions of human
> > >pathogenic protozoa that cause oral disease? (my
> > emphasis is dentistry,
> > >obviously).
> >
>Giardia is a genus of protozoa, but G. gingivalis is
>not known to me. There are several bacterial species
>causing periodontal diseases, of which porphyromonas
>gingivalis is a common one.
>
>Do you mean Entamoeba gingivalis? this is a parasite
>that causes periodontic infections. A search for this
>organism in the PubMed (public database at Natl. Libr.
>Med.) resulted in 45 papers, several of which in
>foreign language. Seems that there is not a lot known
>on this organism. Would be a good subject for your
>study?
>
>For a start, see Clin Infect Dis 1998 Sep;27(3):471-3
>about E. gingivalis in HIV-infected patients, or
>
>http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&lis 
>t_uids=7844431&dopt=Abstract
>
>which is the abstract of a paper on the incidence of
>the infection.
>
>Good luck.
>
>Trudy Wassenaar
============================================================

>I'm not aware of a protozoan called Giardia gingivalis. However, Giardia
>lamblia is a parasite of the intestinal tract that usually is passed by poor
>sanitation conditions (like a water source contaminated with human waste)
>and causes acute diarrhea lasting typically a couple of weeks. There's
>pretty complete and intelligible information on that parasite at a site at
>Tulane:
>
>http://www.tulane.edu/~wiser/protozoology/notes/intes.html#gl_path
>
>Christine Ticknor
>Ph.D. Candidate
>Yale University
>New Haven, Connecticut
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