• Question: @Franco what do you think about paraites

    Asked by Ned & M to Franco on 21 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Franco Falcone

      Franco Falcone answered on 21 Jun 2016:

      @Ned & M
      As a parasitologist I obviously think a lot about parasites, but your question is: what do you think OF parasites?
      Well, the more I study them (and I have done so for almost 20 years now) the more I am fascinated by them, by their ability to adapt to very harsh conditions, in order to survive. I am full of admiration for their survival strategies, and respect for their success. However I do not appreciate what they can do to people or other animals and I would like to rid the planet of some of these parasites, there are very little benefits of having e.g. filariae in your lymphatics, malaria or schistosomes in your blood, or some worms growing in your eyes or brain, so if my work contributes to making them disappear from this planet, I’ll be very happy. So I guess it’s a love-hate relationship I have with them?

Comments

  • Photo: Mark

    Mark commented on :

    Hi Ned & M

    I echo largely what Franco has said. From my perspective it is important to understand not only the effects that parasites have on our health, but how they contribute more widely to the ecosystem that envelopes us all. They have co-evolved with their hosts over hundreds of millions of years so that means that who we are today is partly shaped by the parasites that inhabit us. More evidence is emerging that the interaction with our immune systems is important in not just helping the parasite survive but in allowing our immune systems to function properly. It is clearly unacceptable for people to remain infected, undiagnosed and poorly. But we also need to continue research across all disciplines to make sure that interventions against parasites are optimised and are not going to lead to unintended consequences

  • Photo: Claire

    Claire commented on :

    Hi Ned and M,
    I have several ways of thinking about parasites: first of all, I find them fascinating independently of their wider context – they have such unusual body structures and complicated life cycles and the way that they live is so different to how we live that it is interesting to think about how those features came about. Sometimes it is fun just to find out about something because you want to know, rather than because there is an obvious immediate benefit to society!

    Another way that I think about parasites is as an immunologist studying how the immune system works. One of the ways that someone’s immune cells become activated is by interacting with molecules that are different from those of their own body; we call these molecules that are recognised by the immune system ‘antigens’. Parasites are a complex mix of loads of different antigens that activate the immune system in a huge variety of ways – so even if you break up a parasite into lots of pieces, they still do interesting things from an immunological perspective. As a student I used to separate out antigens from crushed-up parasitic worms according to their size and pH and then add human blood samples to see if any of the parasite antigens were recognised by antibodies from the blood – lots of them are, and the difference is really obvious between blood samples from uninfected people who don’t have many antibodies that recognise parasite antigens, and those who are infected with the parasite who recognise lots more parasite antigens – parasite immunology in action!

    A third way that I think about parasites is in the wider context of their affect on human health and ecosystems, as Mark and Franco describe. It is impossible to ignore the harm that parasites cause to human health – for example the World Health Organisation estimated that there were over 200 million cases of malaria in last year and more than 400,000 deaths. As Franco says, worms growing in the eyes and brain and living in the blood can cause life long illness. For that reason, when I think of parasites, I think of how to get rid of them with medicines or improve the immune function of infected people so that they are better protected from new infections. As Mark says however, ecosystems are made up of parasites, humans, animals and plants that have co-evolved with one another, so we need to be careful when we consider parasite eradication.

    So really I have lots of thoughts on parasites and think about them from many different angles – a basic fascination, a curiosity about how they affect the immune system, and the ‘bigger picture’ of how they affect global health and ecosystems.