Morakot Kaewthamasorn

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• D.V.M., Ph.D.
• Professor at Chulalongkorn University

Haemosporidian infections in domestic chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) are not only widely prevalent but also cause economic loss. Diagnosis is usually made by microscopic examination; however, the method has several drawbacks such as requiring an experienced microscopist, being unreliable when parasitemia is low and being unable to accurately d...

The study of bacterial zoonoses has been under-pursued despite the fact that bacteria cause the majority of zoonotic diseases, of which 70% have a wildlife origin. More Bartonella species are being identified as the cause of human diseases, and several of them have been linked to domestic and wild animals. Bats are outstanding reservoirs for Barton...

The vast majority of trypanosome species are vector-borne parasites, with some of them being medically and veterinary important (such as Trypanosoma cruzi and Trypanosoma brucei) and capable of causing serious illness in vertebrate hosts. The discovery of trypanosomes in bats emphasizes the importance of bats as an important reservoir. Interestingl...

Despite the fact that over a hundred anopheline mosquito species have been identified as human malaria vectors, little is known about ungulate malaria vectors. Consequently, we focused on investigating the bionomics and genetic characterizations of anopheline mosquitoes in goat malaria-endemic regions. We also attempted to screen for ungulate malar...

Unlike malaria parasites in humans, non-human primates, rodents, and birds, ungulate malaria parasites and their vectors have received little attention. As a result, understanding of the hosts, vectors, and biology of ungulate malaria parasites has remained limited. In this study, we aimed to identify the vectors of the goat malaria parasite Plasmo...

Two parasites infected both penguins and other cdaptive birds are Plasmodium spp. and P. collidatum. There are two haemosporidians with different clade from both with cross infection, infected only captive birds (P. gallinaceum and Haemoproteus spp.) and penguin (Plasmodium spp. and H. columbae). Same haemosporidian that infected penguins and other...

Background Bat flies belong to the order Diptera and superfamily Hippoboscoidea. They can be divided into two families, Streblidae and Nycteribiidae, which collectively encompass 239 and 280 species worldwide, respectively. In Thailand, 43 species of Nycteribiidae and 16 species of Streblidae have been documented. Despite their diversity, the molec...

Background Second only to mosquitoes, ticks (Acari: Ixodida) are significant blood-feeding ectoparasites and vectors of numerous pathogens affecting both animals and humans. Despite bats serving as hosts to various tick species, they remain relatively understudied due to their nocturnal behavior and laborious capture procedures. Soft ticks in parti...

Climate change, land development, and increased outdoor human activity have increased the prevalence and distribution of tick-borne pathogens, causing public health issues. Asia is a pivotal region of emerging infectious diseases caused by zoonotic disease. Therefore, this study aimed to construct effective surveillance systems and establish preven...

Background The subfamily Phlebotominae comprises 1028 species of sand fly, of which only 90 are recognized as vectors of pathogenic agents such as Trypanosoma, Leishmania, and Bartonella. In Thailand, leishmaniasis—a sand fly-borne disease—is currently endemic, with 36 documented sand fly species. However, many cryptic species likely remain unident...

Anaplasmosis, which is caused by Anaplasma spp. and transmitted by tick bites, is one of the most serious livestock animal diseases worldwide, causing significant economic losses as well as public health issues. Anaplasma marginale, a gram-negative intracellular obligate bacterium, can cause disease in cattle and other ruminants. Because of the ins...

Vector-borne diseases pose a major worldwide health concern, impacting more than 1 billion people globally. Among various blood-feeding arthropods, mosquitoes stand out as the primary carriers of diseases significant in both medical and veterinary fields. Hence, comprehending their distinct role fulfilled by different mosquito types is crucial for...

Arthropod vectors play a crucial role in the transmission of hemotropic mycoplasmas, small bacteria that infect red blood cells in a wide range of animals and humans globally, leading to intravascular infections. Traditional Giemsa-stained thin blood smears, used for diagnosing hemotropic mycoplasmas through microscopic examination, have low sensit...

Aims: Aedes-borne diseases, such as Zika and Chikungunya, originate from an enzootic cycle in which non-human primates (NHPs) function as reservoirs. This study aimed to analyze the characteristic habitat and ecological niche models of Aedes albopictus within the confines of a Primate Research Center (PRC), to assess its potential as a site for zoo...

Background Sand flies, belonging to the Psychodidae family, represent small, hairy insects that serve as significant vectors in various important medical and veterinary diseases. Despite being recognized by the World Health Organization as an endemic area for leishmaniasis, Southeast Asia lacks comprehensive information on the species composition a...

Background and Aim: Zoonotic diseases caused by various blood parasites are important issues of public health concern, impacting both animals and humans worldwide. The traditional method of microscopic examination for the parasite diagnosis is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and prone to variability among observers, necessitating highly skilled an...

Sand flies are small, hairy insects that play an important role as vector in many medical and veterinary diseases, Until recently, there is still a lack of informa tion on sand flies' diversity and sand fly-borne pathogen in Southeast Asia, despite the region's endemic Leishmaniasis status. This might lead to difficulties in disease control and pre...

We reported the prevalence of Rickettsia infection in bat ticks in Thailand.

Background Climate change, land development, and increased outdoor human activity have increased the prevalence and distribution of tick-borne pathogens, causing public health issues. Asia is considered a pivotal region of emerging infectious diseases caused by zoonotic disease, thus requiring active research in Asian countries. Therefore, this stu...

Background and Objectives Porcine Circovirus Type 3 (PCV3) and Mycoplasma suis (M. suis) pose significant challenges to swine reproductive health. The primary objective was to identify the incidence of PCV3, M. suis and other common pathogens; understand the clinical and pathological characteristics and pathogenicity of the pathogens on swine rep...

Trypanosomiasis, a significant health concern in South America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, requires active surveys to effectively control the disease. To address this, we have developed a hybrid model that combines deep metric learning (DML) and image retrieval. This model is proficient at identifying Trypanosoma species in microscopic images...

Ticks and tick-borne pathogens (TTBP) pose a serious threat to animal and human health globally. Anaplasma bovis, an obligatory intracellular bacterium, is one of the more recent species of the Family Anaplasmaceae to be formally described. Owing to its diminutive size, microscopic detection presents a formidable challenge, leading to it being over...

Virulent species or strains of hematophagous borne pathogens such as Anaplasma spp., Babesia spp., Theileria spp., and Trypanosoma spp., are lethal to susceptible animals or reduce their productivity on a global scale. Nonetheless, efforts to diagnose the causative agents and assess the genotypic profiles as well as quantify the parasite burden of...

Although ‘Candidatus Mycoplasma haematomacacae’ (formerly known as ‘Candidatus Mycoplasma haemomacaque’) have been reported on extensively in macaques from Thailand, the USA, Japan, and Brazil, their genetic characterization has primarily been restricted to the 16S rRNA sequences with no exploration on multi-locus sequence analysis. The primary goa...

Tick-borne diseases have a significant impact on human and animal populations, posing an increasing threat to public health, particularly in the context of climate change. Along with the various natural hosts of ticks, birds play a notable role in transmitting ticks and tick-borne pathogens, indicating the importance of monitoring flyways and es...

We conducted an investigation on tick infestation in 1031 bats in Thailand, revealing an overall prevalence of 3.3% (34 out of 1031 bats). Among the bats examined, we identified Reticulinasus faini soft ticks in two species: Craseonycteris thonglongyai (23.74%, 33 out of 139 bats) and Eonycteris spelaea (50%, 1 out of 2 bats). This study represents...

In recent phylogenetic studies, bat Polychromophilus and ungulate Plasmodium, two relatively understudied haemosporidian parasites within the Apicomplexa phylum, have often been overlooked. Instead, the focus has been primarily on haemosporidian parasites in primates, rodents, and birds. Several phylogenetic analyses of bat Polychromophilus have re...

Tick-borne diseases have a significant impact on human and animal populations, posing an increasing threat to public health, particularly in the context of climate change. Along with the various natural hosts of ticks, birds play a notable role in transmitting ticks and tick-borne pathogens, indicating the importance of monitoring flyways and estab...

Recently, with the spread of infectious diseases worldwide, interest in zoonotic diseases related to wild animals has been increasing. East Asia is regarded as a key region for emerging infectious diseases caused by zoonotic pathogens introduced by wildlife. Ticks possessing zoonotic pathogens may be transferred to various geographical areas along...

Trypanosomiasis is a significant public health problem in several regions across the world, including South Asia and Southeast Asia. The identification of hotspot areas under active surveillance is a fundamental procedure for controlling disease transmission. Microscopic examination is a commonly used diagnostic method. It is, nevertheless, primari...

Despite the natural occurrences of human infections by Plasmodium knowlesi, P. cynomolgi, P. inui, and P. fieldi in Thailand, investigating the prevalence and genetic diversity of the zoonotic simian malaria parasites in macaque populations has been limited to certain areas. To address this gap, a total of 560 long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicula...

Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever and malaria are the top 10 leading causes of death in low-income countries. Control measure for the mosquito population plays an essential role in the fight against the disease. Currently, several intervention strategies; chemical-, biological-, mechanicaland environmental methods remain under developmen...

Trypanosomiasis caused Trypanosoma evansi is current public health concern especially, in south Asia and Southeast Asia. Although polymerase chain reaction is currently used as a standard method, the techniques required skilled personnel, were performed in multiple steps, and required expensive instruments. Fundamental microscopic approach als...

Bovine anaplasmosis is a serious tick-borne disease that is responsible for economic loss worldwide. The major surface proteins (MSPs), encoded by msp1 to msp5 genes of Anaplasma marginale, play an important role in host-pathogen and tick-pathogen interactions. These markers have been used for genetic characterization and phylogenetic studies. Desp...

Bovine babesiosis is one of the most economically important tick-borne diseases in tropical and subtropical countries. A conventional microscopic diagnosis is typically used because it is inexpensive and expeditious. However, it is highly dependent on well-trained microscopists and tends to be incapable of detecting subpatent and chronic infections...

Mycoplasma (M.) suis is a pathogenic hemotropic Mycoplasma sp. that causes acute hemolytic anemia or chronic infection in pigs. M. suis infection can be diagnosed using several methods, including molecular diagnosis such as conventional PCR (cPCR) and quantitative PCR (qPCR). In these cases, the common target is the 16S rRNA gene; however, this gen...

A microfluidic device with ferromagnetic microstructures designed to locally induce strong magnetophoretic force for capturing infected blood cells has been employed for malaria diagnosis for a long time. In this study, new configurations of V- and W-shaped nickel microstructures fabricated by an electroplating process and magnet arrays were propos...

Ungulate malaria parasites and their vectors are among the least studied when compared to other medically important species. As a result, a thorough understanding of ungulate malaria parasites, hosts, and mosquito vectors has been lacking, necessitating additional research efforts. This study aimed to identify the vector(s) of Plasmodium bubalis. A...

Ticks and tick-borne pathogens (TTBPs) pose a serious economic threat to ruminant production worldwide. Despite this, investigations focused on goats remain limited compared to those for pathogens infecting cattle. We carried out PCR-based surveys and phylogenetic analyses to examine TTBPs from 6 provinces in Thailand between January 2016 and June...

Hemoplasma is a trivial name for hemotropic Mycoplasma spp., which can attach to the surface of red blood cells leading to deformity and anemia in a wide range of mammalian animals, including pigs. In Thailand, there is only one study that reported the occurrence of Mycoplasma suis without other hemoplasma species. In this study, we examined the mo...

Leishmania martiniquensis is a neglected cause of an emerging leishmaniasis in many countries, including France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States of America, Myanmar, and Thailand, with different clinical manifestations ranging from asymptomatic, cutaneous (CL), visceral (VL), and atypically disseminated CL and VL. The persistence of parasit...

Background Vaccines against the sexual stages of the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum are indispensable for controlling malaria and abrogating the spread of drug-resistant parasites. Pfs25, a surface antigen of the sexual stage of P. falciparum , is a leading candidate for transmission-blocking vaccine development. While clinical trials have...

Background: Vaccines against the sexual stages of the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum are indispensable for controlling malaria and abrogating the spread of drug-resistant parasites. Pfs25, a surface antigen of the sexual stage of P. falciparum, is a leading candidate for transmission-blocking vaccine development. While clinical trials have...

The infection of an avian malaria parasite ( Plasmodium gallinaceum ) in domestic chickens presents a major threat to the poultry industry because it causes economic loss in both the quality and quantity of meat and egg production. Computer-aided diagnosis has been developed to automatically identify avian malaria infections and classify the blood...

Highlights The regions of SURFIN1.1 were identified: SURFIN1.1 is comprised of extracellular, transmembrane (TM), and intracellular regions. Nucleotide and amino acid sequences of the extracellular region of P. falciparum SURFIN1.1 from a total of 31 field isolates were obtained and analyzed for genetic polymorphism: six different haplotypes were i...

Intraerythrocytic parasites are traditionally identified by the microscopic examination of Giemsa-stained blood smears. However, this method does not always allow for the identification of individual species in goat’s RBCs. Moreover, its unreliability in detecting low levels of parasitemia makes it unsuitable for epidemiological investigations and...

Background: The infections of an avian malaria parasite (Plasmodium gallinaceum) in domestic chickens presents a major threat to poultry industry because it cause economical loss in both quality and quantity of meat and egg productions. Deep learning algorithms have been developed to identify avian malaria infections and classify its blood stage de...

The infection of an avian malaria parasite ( Plasmodium gallinaceum ) in domestic chickens presents a major threat to the poultry industry because it causes economic loss in both the quality and quantity of meat and egg production. Computer-aided diagnosis has been developed to automatically identify avian malaria infections and classify the blood...

Abstract Background Anaplasmosis, an animal disease caused by rickettsial bacteria in the genus Anaplasma, is of considerable economic importance in livestock animals in many countries worldwide. The objectives of this study were to determine the identity, prevalence, and geographic distribution of Ehrlichia and Anaplasma in naturally infected wate...

Malaria parasites in the phylum Apicomplexa (Order: Haemosporida) infect diverse vertebrates and invertebrate hosts. At least seven genera of haemosporidian parasites have been described to exclusively infect bats. Most of these parasites remain enigmatic with a poorly known host range. Here, we investigated 271 bats belonging to 21 species and sev...

Vector-borne pathogens (VBPs) pose a great risk to ruminant production through significant economic losses. Several previous studies in Thailand have mainly been focused on the health of dairy and beef cattle. Water buffaloes are one of the important ruminants in the country, but studies on their infection with VBPs remains limited. We conducted a...

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.

Development of an effective vaccine is critically needed for the prevention of malaria. One of the key antigens for malaria vaccines is the apical membrane antigen 1 (AMA-1) of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, the surface protein for erythrocyte invasion of the parasite. The gene encoding AMA-1 has been sequenced from populations o...

Plasmodium was first identified in a goat in Angola in 1923, and only recently characterized by DNA isolation from a goat blood sample in Zambia. Goats were first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent approximately 10,000 years ago, and are now globally distributed. It is not known if the Plasmodium identified in African goats originated from parasi...

Supplement data of "Genetic homogeneity of goat malaria parasites in Asia and Africa suggests their expansion with domestic goat host"

Plasmodium falciparum collection sites in Thailand. Mae Hong Son (MH), Kanchanaburi (K) and Ranong (RN) are situated in Western Thailand and share a border with Myanmar. Trat (TD) is located in Eastern Thailand and shares a border with Cambodia, while Ubon Ratchatani (UB) is in Northeastern Thailand and shares a border with Laos. n, the number of p...

Polymorphic nucleotides in the AMA-1 gene of P. falciparum in Thailand

Nucleotide sequences of primers for amplification of P. falciparum AMA-1 gene and for DNA sequencing

Sequences of the AMA-1 gene of P. falciparum populations in Asia, Oceania, Africa, and South America

NCBI accession numbers of the 31 AMA-1 haplotypes from P. falciparum in Thailand reported in the present study

Ixodid ticks are important vectors of tick-borne disease agents affecting humans and animals, with wildlife often serving as important reservoirs. This study examined protozoal and bacterial infection in questing ticks in forest habitats in Chonburi Province, Thailand in 2015, using PCR and DNA sequencing techniques. A total of 12,184 ticks were mo...

Background: The glutamate-rich protein (GLURP) of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is a key surface antigen that serves as a component of a clinical vaccine. Moreover, the GLURP gene is also employed routinely as a genetic marker for malarial genotyping in epidemiological studies. While extensive size polymorphisms in GLURP are well reco...

Avian malaria caused by Plasmodium gallinaceum is an important mosquito-borne disease. Eradication of this disease remains problematic since its competent vectors are diverse and widely distributed across the globe. Several mosquito species were implicated as competent vectors for this parasite. However, studies on vector competence for P. gallinac...

Clinical manifestations of malaria infection in vertebrate hosts arise from the multiplication of the asexual stage parasites in the blood, while the gametocytes are responsible for the transmission of the disease. Antimalarial drugs that target the blood stage parasites and transmissible gametocytes are rare, but are essentially needed for the eff...

Background An effective malaria vaccine is an urgently needed tool to fight against human malaria, the most deadly parasitic disease of humans. One promising candidate is the merozoite surface protein-3 (MSP-3) of Plasmodium falciparum. This antigenic protein, encoded by the merozoite surface protein (msp-3) gene, is polymorphic and classified acco...

SUMMARY Over a hundred years since their first description in 1913, the sparsely described malaria parasites (genus Plasmodium ) of ungulates have been rediscovered using molecular typing techniques. In the span of weeks, three studies have appeared describing the genetic characterization and phylogenetic analyses of malaria parasites from African...

Hookworm and threadworm infections are major public health problems in developing countries. A cross sectional study comprising 843 participants (346 males and 497 females) was conducted in three populations: i) Thai residents (TR) of Ubon Ratchathani Province, Thailand; ii) Laotian immigrant workers (LI) in the same province; and iii) Laotian resi...

The large number of deaths caused by malaria each year has increased interest in the development of effective malaria diagnoses. At the early-stage of infection, patients show non-specific symptoms or are asymptomatic, which makes it difficult for clinical diagnosis, especially in non-endemic areas. Alternative diagnostic methods that are timely an...