Peter James Krause, MD

Dr. Peter J. Krause is Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. He received his B.A. with honors in biology from Williams College and his M.D. from Tufts University School of Medicine. He completed his Pediatric internship and residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital and Stanford University Medical Center and his Pediatric Infectious Diseases training at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He joined the faculty at the University of Connecticut in 1979 where he became Professor of Pediatrics and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases. He returned to Yale in 2008.

Dr. Krause is an international authority on human babesiosis who carries out translational, epidemiological, and clinical research in the study of vector-borne diseases. His primary focus has been on human babesiosis but he has also carried out research on two companion tick-borne infections, Lyme disease and relapsing fever caused by Borrelia miyamotoi. He is the author of more than 200 peer reviewed scientific publications and 35 book chapters., the majority focusing on human babesiosis. He also has coedited two books: North American Parasitic Zoonoses (Kluwer Academic Publishers) with Dr. Dennis Richardson and Immunoepidemiology (Springer) with Dr. Nancy Ruddle and Dr. Paula Kavathas. He currently serves on the Editorial Boards of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Clinical Microbiology Reviews, Plos Neglected Tropical Diseases, and Pathogens. He has served as a reviewer for more that 80 medical journals. He also has served on several leadership committees of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and Connecticut Infectious Diseases Society. He recently served as chair of the committee that wrote the Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Infectious Diseases Society of America's 2020 Guideline on Diagnosis and Management of Babesiosis. He also was a member of the committee that wrote the Infectious Diseases Society of America Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Lyme Disease. He has been cited in American Men and Women of Science, The Best Doctors in America, and Who’s Who in America. He served on the Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health Tick Borne Disease Working Group 2021-2022.

Dr. Krause and his colleagues were the first to:

• Characterize the frequency and clinical outcome of human tick-borne disease coinfection
• Identify the long-term persistence of Babesia infection in people
• Perform an antibiotic treatment trial for human babesiosis. This trial introduced the use of atovaquone and azithromycin, the treatment of choice for babesiosis since the trial was conducted 25 years ago.
• Characterize persistent and relapsing babesiosis in immunocompromised hosts
• Develop and test a laboratory method for screening the blood supply for Babesia microti infection
• Discover human infection by the relapsing fever spirochete Borrelia miyamotoi
• Discover human infection by Borrelia miyamotoi in the United States (co-discoverers)
• Develop a Borrelia miyamotoi antibody assay
• Describe the epidemiology of Borrelia miyamotoi infection
• Provide evidence that Borrelia miyamotoi may be transmitted through blood transfusion
• They also have quantitated the risk of transmission of babesiosis and Lyme disease though blood transfusion and developed several antibody and molecular-based tests for the diagnosis of babesiosis and Borrelia miyamotoi.