They’re Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease<br />Trilobites By<br />HEATHER MURPHY<br />MARCH 1, 2018<br />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<br />that afflicts more than 200 million people a year, killing thousands, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South America.<br />The first time that people are exposed to Schistosoma mansoni larvae, they can have an acute reaction known as Katayama fever<br />or develop a central nervous system infection, which in rare cases causes irreversible neurological damage or death.<br />National School said that You get yourself in a Catch-22,<br />When the offspring hatch, some may get lodged in the liver or bladder, inducing an immune responses<br />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.<br />But she said the risk to the student volunteers is "extremely small," especially compared with the<br />potential benefit to preventing a disease that burdens millions of the world’s poorest people.
