ABSTRACT
Although Cryptosporidium was first described in 1907, it took almost 50 years before it was recognized as a pathogen of livestock and 70 years before it was recognized as a pathogen of humans. Much of this delay was due to the lack of cost-effective methodologies to detect the parasites in clinical samples and to determine the significance of infection and disease at a population level. This chapter deals with Cryptosporidium diagnosis in clinical samples from infected human and nonhuman hosts.
