Genetic study reveals secrets of parasitic worms, possible treatments

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.

The results indicate that deworming treatments may help combat some of the most neglected tropical diseases, such as river blindness, schistosomiasis and hookworms, which affect about one billion people worldwide.

"Parasitic worms are some of our oldest enemies and have evolved over millions of years to become expert manipulators of the human immune system," said Makedonka Mitreva of the McDonnell Genome Institute at the University of Washington , who led the work with colleagues from the Wellcome Sanger Institute of Great Britain. and the University of Edinburgh.

She said the results of this study would lead to both a deeper knowledge of pest biology and a better understanding of how the human immune system can be exploited or controlled.

Parasitic infections can last for many years and can cause severe pain, physical disability, retarded development in children, and social stigma associated with deformity.

Drugs currently used to combat them, including drugs manufactured by Sanofi, GSK and Johnson & Johnson, can be moderately effective and are often donated by drug manufacturers or sold at reduced prices to those who need them. But the spectrum of drugs to treat worm infections is still limited.

To try to improve the pipeline of potential drugs and understand how worms invade humans and other animals and install them, the research team compared the genomes of 81 species of to round and flatworms, of which 45 had never seen their genomes sequenced yet.

The analysis revealed that nearly one million new genes had never been seen, belonging to thousands of new gene families, and identified many new targets and potential drugs.

"We have focused our research on existing drugs to treat human diseases," said Avril Coghlan, of the Sanger Institute, who worked in the team. She said this offered a possible "quick way to identify existing medicines that could be reused for deworming".

The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Genetics on Monday.