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Potential new treatment for victims of nasty parasitic worms
Updated March 10, 2010
There's new hope for tackling one of the world's least-publicised health scourges, the roundworm. About two billion people worldwide are believed to be infected with parasitic worms. In children the roundworms can cause stunted growth and delay their mental development. They can also reduce people's immunity to other serious diseases, like HIV and malaria. Now a United States scientist is developing a new treatment that uses a common soil bacterium which organic farmers have been using for decades to kill insects. He also says it's a disgrace how little effort governments and NGOs are putting in to stopping the spread of the parasites.
Presenter: Carly Laird
Speakers: Dr Nick Sangster, School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Charles Sturt University; Professor Raffi Aroian, University of California
CARLY LAIRD: Intestinal roundworms are nasty creatures.
Dr Nick Sangster, a professor in the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences at Charles Sturt University, explains.
NICK SANGSTER: The roundworms get into, they migrate through some tissues and end up in the intestine where they block the intestine. Whipworms are blood sucking worms so they cause anaemia and whipworms are more irritant than anything else.
CARLY LAIRD: The worms mostly infect people in tropical areas. In Australia, Aboriginal populations are disproportionately affected. But new research is offering hope for a new treatment.
Professor Raffi Aroian, from the University of California, has published his work in the Public Library of Sciences' journal of neglected tropical diseases.
He found that a common soil bacterium which has been used by organic farmers for decades significantly reduces the parasite in mice.
RAFFI AROIAN: We saw that you could take a single dose and give it orally to mice infected with this intestinal roundworm parasite and a single dose would kill, drive out 70 per cent of the parasites. In addition, if you looked at the reproduction of the parasite, so the male and female worms mate in the post-intestine and they lay eggs into the faeces, so what we saw is that there was about a 98 per cent drop off in the number of eggs in the faeces. So 70 per cent of the worms were killed, driven out and 98 per cent of their reproductive capacity was knocked out.
CARLY LAIRD: This is the second study that Raffi Aroian and his team have conducted into the use of the soil bacterium known as Bt.
He says he's fairly confident that Bt treatments can translate to humans.
RAFFI AROIAN: In both studies the crystal protein is able to drive out, kill two different parasites in actually two different rodents, hamsters and mice, and so that bodes extremely well for this compound, for this natural bacterial organic protein being able to cure human intestinal roundworms.
CARLY LAIRD: Dr Nick Sangster says he's encouraged by the research.
NICK SANGSTER: Well generating new anti-parasitic chemicals or remedies let's call them is a really big issue for livestock production and human health. So finding something new is a pretty significant finding.
CARLY LAIRD: But Professor Aroian says it still might be two to four years before they can conduct a human clinical trial and only then if they can get the necessary funding.
RAFFI AROIAN: There's the sticking point alright, is that the funding, as I told you, there's only one drug in 30 years that's been made. And that's 'cause people have, for reasons I think more of ignorance than anything else, put hardly any resources into this problem.
CARLY LAIRD: And yet the problem goes beyond the symptoms caused by parasitic worms.
RAFFI AROIAN: Worm infections exacerbate HIV AIDS. They're also more susceptible, they're more likely to have malaria, they also have decreased immunity to cholera and they're more likely to have tuberculosis. On top of that the other worms also cause vaccines to fail.
CARLY LAIRD: He wants governments and NGOs to put more resources into treating people with the parasites.
Source:
Radio AustraliaGuan
