They’re Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease
Trilobites By
HEATHER MURPHY
MARCH 1, 2018
Seventeen volunteers in the Netherlands have agreed to host parasitic worms in their bodies for 12 weeks in order to help advance research toward a vaccine for schistosomiasis, a chronic disease
that afflicts more than 200 million people a year, killing thousands, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South America.
The first time that people are exposed to Schistosoma mansoni larvae, they can have an acute reaction known as Katayama fever
or develop a central nervous system infection, which in rare cases causes irreversible neurological damage or death.
National School said that You get yourself in a Catch-22,
When the offspring hatch, some may get lodged in the liver or bladder, inducing an immune responses
that can lead to chronic pain, fever, organ failure, internal bleeding or a gynecological infection that many researchers believe dramatically increases the risk of being infected by H.I.V.
But she said the risk to the student volunteers is "extremely small," especially compared with the
potential benefit to preventing a disease that burdens millions of the world’s poorest people.
