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Asked by Stephy16 to Mark, Linda, Koi, Franco, Claire on 16 Jun 2016.
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Franco Falcone answered on 16 Jun 2016:
Hi Stephy16
it depends entirely on the parasite and which drug is used to treat it!
Some parasitic infections are self-limiting, which means that you don’t need to do anything and the infection wil disappear after some time – you may not even have noticed that you were infected!
Some parasitic infections such as filariasias can be treated successfully with a single dose of a drug called ivermectin, given once a year. For many other infections, there will be repeated doses. For example, treating hookworms or pinworms with Mebendazole (another dug against worms) would happen over 2 or 3 days, taking several tablets per day, sometimes with a second round of treatment one month later. And then there are some parasitic infections which if discovered too late, are very, very difficult to treat, and may require a combination of surgery and lifelong treatment. And worst of all, for some parasites the treatment is almost as bad as the disease.
Another problem, occurring frequently for example in malaria parasites, is that they are getting resistant to the drugs which used to kill them.There is another issue though: in many cases, treatment does not protect from being infected again! And this is why it would be good to have a vaccine that could protect you against being infected in the first place. Unfortunately there is no functioning vaccine against human parasites, although there is one being tested against malaria. So developing vaccines against parasitic infections is an important task, also because with climate change, patterns of infection will change. Diseases have no borders!
So in summary, the length of treatment depends on the type of parasite one is infected with and the drug used to treat the infection!
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Arporn Wangwiwatsin answered on 16 Jun 2016:
Hi Stephy16,
I think Franco covered it really well. If we talk about human parasites, some of them we don’t even have cure for, only to slow down the grow of the parasites, whereas some parasites there are treatments but the side effect is so bad that we could say it either kill the parasites or kill the patients. For some parasites though there is an effective treatment (e.g. the ivermectin that Franco mentioned – and I was very excited when the discovery of ivermectin was recognised and won the nobel prize last year together with the current treatment for malaria!!).PS. nice profile 😉
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Claire Bourke answered on 16 Jun 2016:
Hi Stephy16, Franco and Koi have already given great answers and I totally agree, the treatment depends on the parasite.
I am interested in the immune system, which is our defense against infections and it too has very variable response times. Often the immune system can respond fastest and most effectively if it is able to recognise the infection early…that’s why some parasites have learned to avoid being detected (stealthy!), so even the immune system may be slow to respond. Where the immune system fails to spot and kill an invading parasite, the infection can get worse and worse and that’s when we may need medicines to help out.
Developing brand new cures, such as a new vaccine, takes a really long time – firstly because identifying the chink in a highly adapted parasites armour can be difficult, but also because each new treatment has to be tested in animals and humans very carefully to check that it is safe and works well. This process can take decades from start to finish! The good news however is that there have been a couple of recent examples, especially with the Ebola virus outbreak that was in the news a lot last year, where treatment and vaccine development occured much quicker than normal and hopefully this can be the start of making the process more efficient for other infections, including parasites.
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Linda Anagu answered on 17 Jun 2016:
Stephy16, how long it takes depends on the kind of parasite, the kind of drug used to treat the disease and occasionally the immune system of the individual. Immune system helps you to fight the bacteria, with or without the drug.
The drug is the obvious first line of defense your doctors use but they are certainly relying o your immune system to do a good job. A drug will have to get into the body be absorbed into the intestine and then get into the parasite to kill them. A lot of drug used are stage specific (act on different stage of the parasite and different stage of the parasite live in different parts of the body or tissue) and so the doctor looks at your symptom to determine what likely stage the parasite could be in or if the parasite is in a certain part of the body before choosing the best drug to give you. Some drugs are not good at getting into the brain so if the parasite is in your brain, the doctor has to give you the drug that will get into our brain.
Malaria parasite for example gets into your skin, then moves to your liver, then into the red blood cells. Some infected red blood cells can transfer the parasite to our brain when they move. It is when they are in the red blood cells that you begin to experience symptoms. So the doctor will give you a drug to kill the parasites in your red blood cells, even those in the brain. It takes 14 -28 days for all the parasite o die as some will be trying to produce more offspring.So it can take that long. However, for malaria cause by plasmodium vivax, this parasite remains in the liver and can keep coming into the red blood cells after the drug is gone. And so to treat such malaria you have to be given a drug that will kill the parasite in the liver as well as the blood.
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Mark Booth answered on 18 Jun 2016:
Hi Stephy
I think the others have already covered all the main points. I would just add that understanding the reasons why some people are not cured whilst others seem to resist re-infection is partly the role of an epidemiologist. There are many factors – including the genetic basis of immune responses, but also social and ethno-linguistic factors. Some of my work has involved finding out why men and women from different ethno-linguistic groups have very different levels of infection after treatment despite living in the same village
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