Abstract:
Babesiosis is a typical zoonotic, emerging disease caused by a tick-borne intraerythrocytic protozoan of Babesia spp.
that also can be transmitted by blood transfusion. Babesiosis imposes an increasing public-health threat. We
reviewed and mapped epidemiological studies on Babesia in vectors and/or rodents in the People’s Republic of
China (P.R. China) and found that B. microti was the predominant species detected in the investigated regions such
as Heilongjiang, Zhejiang, Fujian provinces and Taiwan island. We reviewed a series of sporadic human babesiosis
cases collected from 1940’s to 2013, in Yunnan, Inner Mongolia, Taiwan and Zhejiang and other regions including a
main endemic area of malaria on the China-Myanmar border areas in P.R. China. Clinical manifestations of human
babesiosis were also reviewed. Human babesiosis may have previously been overlooked in P.R. China due to a lack
of medical awareness and the limitation of clinical diagnostic methods.
