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The largest study to date on the genetic makeup of parasitic worms has revealed hundreds of new clues about how they invade the human body, escape its immune system and cause disease.
Deworming treatments to combat some of the most neglected tropical diseases, including river blindness, schistosomiasis and hookworm, which affect about one billion people worldwide.
"Parasitic worms are among our oldest enemies and have evolved over millions of Makedonka Mitreva of the McDonnell Genome Institute of the University of Washington, who has led the work with colleagues at the Wellcome Sanger Institute of the United Kingdom and from the University of Edinburgh
The results of this study would be: to lead to a deeper knowledge of the biology of parasites and a better understanding of how the human immune system can be exploited or controlled. [19659003] Orm infections can last for many years and can cause severe pain, physical disability, retarded development in children, and social stigma badociated with malformation.
effective and are often given by drug manufacturers. drugs or sold at reduced prices to those who need it.But the specter of drugs to treat worm infections is still limited
In an attempt to improve the potential pipeline of drugs and understand how worms invade and establish in humans and other animals, the team of research compared the genomes of 81 species of roundworms and flatworms, including 45 that had never seen their genome ever sequenced before.
The badysis revealed nearly a million new genes never seen, belonging to thousands of new gene families, and identified many new targets and potential drugs.
"We focused our research on existing drugs for the treatment of human diseases," said Avril Coghlan of the Sanger Institute, who was working on the team. She added that this offered a quick way "to identify existing drugs that could be reused for deworming".
The results of the study were published Monday in the journal Nature Genetics .
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