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Berkeley – Before tiny crustaceans like crayfish, shrimp and shrimp fall into our plates, they must first grow themselves – and it turns out they're enjoying the snails Freshwater that transmit the parasite that causes schistosomiasis, the second most devastating parasitic disease worldwide, after malaria.
A new study by the University of California, Berkeley, provides researchers with a roadmap of how entrepreneurs can exploit the voracious appetite of freshwater shrimps to reduce the transmission of these parasites, also known as "blood turkeys". , while making a profit by selling the tasty animals as food.
The study, which appears in the newspaper Sustainability of nature, shows how small-scale farming of freshwater shrimp – also called aquaculture – could be beneficial for communities in emerging and developing economies, where schistosomiasis is common.
"River shrimps are common aquaculture products around the world, and we know that these organisms are voracious predators of snails that transmit schistosomiasis," said Christopher Hoover of the University of Berkeley, a PhD student at the Environmental Health Sciences Division of the School of Public Health. directed the study. "What has not been clear, is if we could combine the economic benefits of shrimp aquaculture with shrimp disease control activity."
Aquaculture is growing rapidly around the world and could ease the growing pressures on wild fisheries. Freshwater shrimps are already produced in aquaculture systems around the world, from Louisiana to Thailand, Thailand and beyond.
In these aquaculture systems, juvenile shrimp are first raised in hatcheries, then stored in streams where schistosomiasis is transmitted, and then harvested as soon as they reach commercial size. As they grow, shrimps feed on snails carrying the schistosome parasite.
The parasite is unable to infect the shrimp itself and schistosomiasis is not spread by ingestion. Therefore, the breeding, harvesting and consumption of shrimp can not transmit the disease.
The researchers used economic and epidemiological models to determine the best points for storing and harvesting shrimp, with the common goal of reducing schistosomiasis transmission and generating income from the sale of harvested shrimp.
"Our results show that there are extremely beneficial configurations of shrimp aquaculture systems that minimize trade-offs between generating shrimp harvesting income and reducing schistosomiasis transmission," Hoover said. "We can design systems to maximize profits while having a huge impact on reducing disease, potentially helping to lift people out of poverty in emerging and developing economies."
Schistosomiasis, also called "snail fever", affects about 250 million people a year and kills up to 200,000. The disease spreads mainly when people come in contact with the disease. contaminated water. Although drugs are available to treat the disease, they are not enough in some settings. Since drug treatments only take into account the human component of the parasite's transmission cycle, people remain vulnerable to reinfection, even shortly after treatment.
By acting on the environmental component of the transmission cycle – the intermediate snail host population – shrimp-based interventions can complement drug treatment, thus providing better benefits to the population.
The model showed that, to reduce parasite loads, the introduction of native shrimp into infected streams was comparable to the standard approach for large scale administration of schistosomiasis reduce the parasite load to near zero after 10 years.
Shrimps may also have environmental benefits, including the substitution of chemical pesticides to control snail populations and the restoration of native biodiversity in areas where native shrimp species have been decimated by dams.
"Chris' research is a new tool for our global efforts to control schistosomiasis," said Justin Remais, chief of the Environmental Health Sciences Division and co-author of the study. "Poverty and schistosomiasis are intrinsically linked, and transmission of the parasite interferes with children's growth and cognitive development and prevents adults from working, thereby increasing poverty by targeting the transmission of the parasite itself, while supporting a system Local-Based Production When economic benefits accrue to the community, this approach offers considerable potential to complement ongoing disease control campaigns that typically rely on drug treatment alone. "
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The research team also included scientists: Susanne H. Sokolow, Jonas Kemp, Andrea J. Lund, Isabel Jones J., Fiorenza Micheli and Leo Giulio A. of Stanford University; James N. Sanchirico from the University of California at Davis; Tyler Higginson of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey; Gilles Riveau of the Center for Biomedical Research EPLS in Senegal; Amit Savaya and Amit Sagi from Ben Gurion University of the Negev; Shawn Coyle of Kentucky State University; Chelsea L. Wood of the University of Washington; Renato Casagrandi, Lorenza Mari and Marino Gatto from the Polytechnic University of Milan; Andrea Rinaldo and Javier Perez-Saez from the Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and Jason R. Rohr from the University of Notre Dame.
The study was funded by grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Science Foundation and the Fogarty International Center of the National Institute of Health.
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