BIOLOGY Lecture Notes - Golden Pages 2003

10. MEDICAL PARASITOLOGY

Subject Matter and Objectives of Medical Parasitology

Diseases in animals and humans can be classified as endogenous and exogenous. Endogenous diseases originate from structural or functional anomalies of The hereditary apparatus. Exogenous diseases have various causes, including nutritional disorders, avitaminoses, trauma, and others. This group also includes diseases caused by living organisms: Viruses, prokaryotes, and animals. Viruses and prokaryotes cause infectious diseases, whereas diseases caused by animals are referred to as invasive or parasitic diseases.

Medical parasitology studies the structural characteristics and life cycles of parasites, host-parasite interactions, as well as Methods for the Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention of parasitic infections.

The majority of human parasites belong to the phylum Protozoa and the group of worms (helminths). Parasites belonging to the phylum Arthropoda are also widespread; they act as causative agents and vectors of parasitic and infectious diseases.



Last update: 06/08/2026

Editorial and Educational Adaptation: This material has been compiled based on the primary/original source text. The project team performed an editorial review, corrected technical inaccuracies, structured sections, and adapted the content for an educational format.

What was processed:

  • elimination of formatting defects (OCR errors, structural breaks, corrupted characters);
  • editorial organization of content;
  • standardization of terminology in accordance with academic sources;
  • verification of factual statements against the original source text.

All mentions of the author, publication year, and origin of the primary text have been preserved in accordance with the source.