Amoebic ambush artist: salad days ahead?Amoebic a·moe·bic adj. Variant of amebic. ambush artist: Salad days ahead? Tropical medicine specialists, with an eye for the unusual, continue to identify new or newly arrived disease-causing organisms in the United States. Among these is the "leptomixid" amoeba amoeba: see ameba. amoeba One-celled protozoan that can form temporary extensions of cytoplasm (pseudopodia) in order to move about. Some amoebas are found on the bottom of freshwater streams and ponds. shown here, resembling a lettuce leaf in miniature. Since its 1986 discovery in the cyst-riddled brain of a dead baboon baboon, any of the large, powerful, ground-living monkeys of the genus Papio, also called dog-faced monkeys. Five subspecies live in Africa, with one species extending into the Arabian peninsula. at the San Diego Zoo San Diego Zoo One of the world's largest collections of mammals, birds, and reptiles, located in San Diego, Calif., and administered by the Zoological Society of San Diego. The 100-acre (40. , the amoeba has caused 10 human encephalitis deaths in the United States, including two this year, says Govinda S. Visvesvara of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The organism, related to a harmless, soil-dwelling microbe, has never been detected outside its victims but may be ubiquitous in the environment, he adds. Leptomixid-caused encephalitis appears untreatable, says Visvesvara, who suspects the amoeba has led to more deaths than the 16 now tabulated worldwide. |
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