AMOEBAS OF THE STATE OF AGUASCALIENTES

The purpose of this book is to remember that in the world of medicine there is a constant emergence of diseases, some of them with a chronicity of thousands of years that, as they cannot be eradicated from humanity, tend to be forgotten and become a group that current scientists classify as "neglected tropical diseases", but there are always researchers (to whom this book is dedicated) who continue to search for answers to the unknowns that arise in the environment of each disease. Such is the example of amoebiasis, because in the last century and at the beginning of this one there was a group of Mexican researchers who contributed knowledge related to clarifying some points of this disease. This book also tries to keep the attention on the importance of amoebiasis in our state of Aguascalientes, since there is a lot of interest from researchers in the microscopic world who study free-living amoebas and provide knowledge of the biodiversity and ecology of our state, coupled with the fact that the pathogenic amoeba Entamoeba histolytica affects the local population, hence the importance that should be given to the study of amoebiasis in Aguascalientes.

We believe that we live in a world dominated by man, however, we are unaware of this microscopic world that surrounds us and that is part of our life. What's more, we as humanity have, at most, about four million years of evolution; compared to the microscopic beings that began the population of the earth, which was approximately 3.8 billion years ago, this great difference allows us to say that man is immersed in a universe with 2,000,000 species, among them, microbes such as bacteria, fungi, algae and protists. In the state of Aguascalientes, little or nothing is known about the species of amoebae, both free-living and pathogenic, except for some work that has been done with the latter.

Each species of amoeba has biological and/or pathological importance, for example, free-living amoebae are important for the ecological balance of bodies of water, along with their reproduction mechanisms and interaction with other species; in addition to being part of the delicate food chain of these bodies of water, they are also ecological indicators and, of course, of the health of these bodies. Aguascalientes contains myriads of small puddles, natural ponds and man-made embankments, where all kinds of organisms live, such as bacteria, algae, protists, fungi, invertebrates, various vertebrates and, of course, plants. In the case of protists of the Amoebozoa family, this family has two main components: a) free-living amoebas, some of which can become pathogenic, such as Acanthamoeba, Naegleria, etc., and b) pathogenic amoebas that are parasites of humans (Entamoeba histolytica, Acanthamoeba griffini, Entamoeba gingivalis, Naegleria fowleri —not reported to the state—). Therefore, this work attempts to describe a small part of this microscopic universe that coexists with humans.

The study of amoebas allows us, therefore, to see this high capacity of parasites to take full advantage of the molecular processes of the host-parasite relationship to survive and perpetuate their species in humans.