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While humans fear the zoonotic disease, animals fear the reverse
HIV replicating in a T-cell as shown by colorised transmission electron microscopy. HIV emerged as a zoonotic disease, originating from the primate SIV, but how often do viruses go the other way? By NIAID. Many of the most frightening human viruses have only recently made the jump from another species. These ‘zoonoses’ include the pandemic…
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Schistosomiasis: A public health problem in need of a One Health reframing
One Health joint plan of action. FAO; UNEP; WHO; WOAH, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, via Wikimedia Commons An ancient, highly adaptable neglected tropical disease Electron micrograph of an adult male Schistosoma parasite worm. The bar (bottom left) represents a length of 500 μm. Credit: David Williams, Illinois State University. Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by…
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The Potential Impact of Climate Change on Infectious Disease
Image by ELG21 from Pixabay No matter who you are or where you are from, it’s almost inevitable that climate change will have a major impact on your life. Whether it be rising sea levels or changes in food production, it threatens to upend our lives and ecosystems. It can even affect which diseases you…
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What is the economic impact of schistosomiasis? A One Health question.
Caption: In Senegal, animals and humans share water sources. The control of zoonotic schistosomiasis may require implementation of a concurrent human and animal treatment programme. Photo credit Elsa Leger Schistosomiasis, health and socio-economic impact. Schistosomiasis is a debilitating and largely hidden parasitic disease, one of the Neglected Tropical Diseases WHO has targeted for elimination by…
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The sex lives of schistosomes; complexed mixing of genomes
Diagrammatic of how schistosome mating experiments were conducted in the laboratory In 2009, the first molecular data were generated that proved past observations of the occurrence of hybridisation between human and cattle schistosomes, with large numbers of children being infected with these parasites. This raised concern due to the potential zoonotic schistosomiasis transmission risk in…