[niecy]

Hey Kritts & all!!!

I told you I was up all night the other night. This is just one more of several things I found about hookworms, and other parasites.

My problem with this whole ordeal is that our powers that be want to pretend that these diseases don't occur in the United States........it is hard to find as much information for the US, but it is there, I have just got to dig a little more.

I wonder about this organism that they have found that causes toxemia in pregnant women, resulting in many deaths of the mother, and the unborn child. This disease of pregnancy has been around for literally decades........they are just now finding the organism.......they still "don't" know what it is. It is just a "micro-organism", I'm with you Kritts, I wonder if all of these unidentified organisms are closely related.

Hugs and prayers!!
Niecy
xoxoxo


http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1360348

Hookworms are blood-feeding nematodes that infect 740 million people in developing countries (4). Antihelminthics are the current method of control, but increasing drug resistance in nematodes of livestock and rapid reinfection following treatment of infected people have facilitated the need for recombinant vaccines (14, 17).

Most hookworms infect a host by penetrating the skin, although some species are orally infective. Third-stage infective larvae (L3) of the dog hookworm, Ancylostoma caninum, and the major human hookworm, Necator americanus, are developmentally arrested and wait in the soil or on blades of grass to come into contact with a mammalian host. They attach to the host upon skin contact and penetrate via hair follicles, eventually entering blood or lymphatic capillaries. Feeding recommences upon exposure to serum components (, and the worms resume development. They are passively carried to the pulmonary microcirculation, where they undergo tracheal migration by penetrating into the alveoli, to be swept in mucus up the airways and then down into the gut.


http://iai.asm.org/cgi/content/full/74/9/4970

Infection and Immunity, September 2006, p. 4970-4981, Vol. 74, No. 9
0019-9567/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/IAI.07-06
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Innate Immune Responses to Lung-Stage Helminth Infection Induce Alternatively Activated Alveolar Macrophages{dagger}
Joshua J. Reece, Mark C. Siracusa, and Alan L. Scott*


W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
Received 28 April 2006/ Returned for modification 21 June 2006/ Accepted 29 June 2006


http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/hookworm/news-and-features.html
New York Times
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Health Guide
Attack Of The Worms
July 2, 2007 - By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF - Editorial Desk - 738 Words

AIDS is the disease in the global spotlight. But it’s also time to devote more money to other ailments.
Gateses Give $47 Million to Bolster Coordinated Assaults on Diseases
December 20, 2006 - By CELIA W. DUGGER - Foreign Desk - 424 Words

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving $47 million in grants for the control of neglected tropical diseases, now almost forgotten in wealthy nations, that still cause excruciating pain, disfigurement and disability for millions of the world's poorest people, the recipients announced yesterday. The grants are unusual in that they do not single out individual diseases. Instead, they aim to test the idea that diseases such as trachoma, river blindness, lymphatic filariasis and hookworm, which largely afflict the rural poor, can be tackled together more effectively and cheaply than one at a time.


Beyond Swollen Limbs, a Disease's Hidden Agony
April 9, 2006 - By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. - Foreign Desk - 2235 Words

Health experts hope to eliminate lymphatic filariasis, which causes lymph nodes to swell, within a generation.
Ideas & Trends
In the Shadow of AIDS, a World of Other Problems
June 24, 2001 - By STEPHANIE FLANDERS - Week in Review Desk - 1430 Words


SEVENTEEN million Africans dead and 25 million infected with H.I.V. have made their point. At this week's Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, ministers and experts will agree that a multibillion dollar war on AIDS is global priority No. 1. They will say that, and they will mean it. But when talking about aid for the poorest countries, things are seldom that simple. ''AIDS is a catastrophe,'' said Dr. Lant Pritchett, a former economist at the World Bank who teaches development economics at Harvard. ''And it's not fair, if treatments exist, not to give them to all these people who are dying. But it's also not fair that more than a third of children in Africa are malnourished. It's not fair that maybe 140 babies in every 1,000 will die before the age of 1, and more than a third will never learn to read. All of it is unfair. Unfairness is not the test for action.''
For most of Western history, the average child walked around with a bellyful of parasitic worms: pinworms, tapeworms, hookworms. Then modern civilization came along, put shoes on the children's feet, installed sewers and stopped using human waste as fertilizer, and the worms mostly disappeared. But there may be a downside to all this hygiene. Children in industrialized countries, which are relatively worm-free, have a much greater tendency than those in other countries to grow into adults with autoimmune disorders (in which the body is attacked by its own immune system), like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus and inflammatory bowel disease.
Panel Says Deadly Illness Can Be Eradicated
September 22, 1992 - Science Desk - 398 Words

A pork tape worm illness that causes about 50,000 deaths worldwide every year could be eradicated someday, an international task force has concluded. About 50 million cases of the pork tape worm disease, or taeniasis-cysticercosis, were reported worldwide last year. It is most prevalent in less developed countries like those in Latin America, Africa and Asia, where pigs often run loose in villages, said Dr. Peter Schantz of the Federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Parasites Take the Biological Spotlight
July 17, 1990 - By NATALIE ANGIER - Science Desk - 2575 Words


LEAD: TO the ancient Greeks, the word ''parasite'' meant one who eats at the table of another. But far from having the decency to sit down for dinner, most parasites in nature suck the blood, sip at the gastric juices of the intestines, pierce into the nourishing warmth of muscle tissue and otherwise leech rudely off the fluids and labors of their unwilling hosts.
Foundation Backing Project To Fight Parasitic Illnesses
October 18, 1984 - UPI - National Desk - 83 Words


A $20 million research campaign against parasitic illnesses that plague about three billion people worldwide is being started by the John D. and Catherine L. MacArthur Foundation. Malaria, amoebic dysentery, hookworm and African sleeping sickness are the key targets of the research in the United States, Mexico, Australia and Israel. ''Diseases caused by parasites afflict more than half the world's people,'' said Dr. Jonas Salk, chairman of the MacArthur Board Health Committee.
MICRO-ORGANISM IS SUSPECTED AS MAJOR KILLER IN PREGNANCY
January 27, 1983 - UPI - National Desk - 449 Words

Researchers today reported the discovery of a micro-organism they believe is linked to toxemia of pregnancy, which may cause the deaths of up to five million expectant mothers and fetuses worldwide each year. Toxemia of pregnancy is the second most important cause of maternal and fetal death, after hemorrhage, according to health officials. ''About 5 to 10 percent of all pregnant women will have the disease,'' Dr. Silvio Aladjem, chairman of Loyola University Medical Center's obstetrics and gynecology department, said in an interview. He said the incidence of the disease worldwide was hardly, if at all, affected by prevailing conditions of sanitation and general health.