Brugia malayi		Contents		Rev 02/21/2024
		Classification		Hosts
		Morphology and Anatomy		Life Cycle
Return to Brugia Menu		Economic Importance		Damage
		Distribution		Management
Return to Onchocercidae Menu		Feeding		References
		Nemaplex Home Page		Go to Dictionary of Terminology

Classification:

Chromadorea
Chromadoria

 Rhabditida 

                               Spirurina

                                  Filarioidea

                           Filariidae or

Onchocercidae

 

            Brugia malayi (Brug, 1927) Buckley, 1960

The causal agent of brugian filariasis, elephantiasis, lymphatic filariasis

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Morphology and Anatomy:

Reported median body size for this species (Length mm; width micrometers; weight micrograms) - Click:         

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Distribution:

Many aspects of the biology of Brugia malayi are similar to Wuchereria bancrofti .  It is vectored by mosquitoes and can cause elephantiasis.  The primary difference between the two species is that brugian filariasis is not as widely distributed as is bancroftian filariasis, although the distributions of the two diseases overlap in many areas of the world.

Essentially endemic to Southeast Asia

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Economic Importance:

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Feeding:

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Hosts:

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Life Cycle:

Brugia malayi develops through four larval stages into an adult male or female within one of two host species—a mosquito vector (Culex, Aedes, and Anopheles) and humans. In humans, the adult worms can live for more than a decade. 

Most filarial nematodes, including B. malayi, carry three genomes: nuclear, mitochondrial, and that of an alphaproteobacterial endosymbiont, Wolbachia. Ther nuclear genome of B. malayia is organized as five chromosomes that include an XY sex determining pair  (Ghedin et al., 2007).

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Damage:

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Management:

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References:

Ghedin, E. (+71 other authors) 2007. Draft Genome of the Filarial Nematode Parasite Brugia malayi. Science 317:5845

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For more information about nematodes, Go to Nemaplex Main Menu.

Copyright  1999 by Howard Ferris.
Revised: February 21, 2024.