All posts tagged: parasites

Parasitic sleeping sickness creates ‘invisibility cloak’ to hide in humans for years

Parasitic sleeping sickness creates ‘invisibility cloak’ to hide in humans for years

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The notorious disease known as sleeping sickness can lurk inside a host for months or even years before serious symptoms arrive. When these tiny parasites do, it’s often a death sentence for its human host. After confounding epidemiologists for decades, researchers now know exactly how sleeping sickness can remain undetected for so long. Its secret weapon is a constantly adapting “invisibility cloak” crafted from special proteins. The evidence is laid out in a study published on March 30 in the journal Nature Microbiology. Trypanosomiasis, better known as sleeping sickness, starts with a tiny bloodsucking bug called the tsetse fly that causes a huge problem. Like the mosquito, the tsetse fly is a vector for multiple dangerous diseases. However, the tsetse fly is particularly notorious for its role in spreading sleeping sickness in humans via the parasite Typanosoma brucei gambiense (T. brucei). Roughly 70 million people across 36 countries are still at risk of contracting sleeping sickness, and a total …

The SEO parasites buying, exploiting and ultimately killing online newsbrands

The SEO parasites buying, exploiting and ultimately killing online newsbrands

Published by Sam Flores

Website of Charlie Gard Foundation now promotes gambling for SEO firm Parasitical SEO companies are buying respected online news outets in order to harvest their reputations before leaving behind a ruined shell.  One organisation linked to this sort of activity is Clickout Media, which bought a network of UK-based videogame sites replacing human writers with AI ‘journalists’ and packing them with links to offshore gambling websites. Hundreds of websites are believed to have received the same treatment from Clickout Media according to former employees who spoke on condition of anonymity to Press Gazette. Sites typically go from being viable outlets, still valuable enough to be bought for large sums, to being filled with AI-written articles and casino links, before simply being abandoned. Speaking anonymously, one former Clickout Media employee said: “I was moved from site to site. Writing guidelines and strategies changed every other week with very little explanation. At first, I didn’t write casino content, but then I wrote articles on bets and odds. Then AI articles started appearing.” The owners of one site …

This deadly dog ‘spaghetti’ has ancient origins

This deadly dog ‘spaghetti’ has ancient origins

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Every year, millions of dogs come face-to-face with a life threatening parasite coiled up inside one of their vital organs—heartworm. The spaghetti-looking parasite can be fatal when left untreated. New research into the widespread canine parasite suggests that heartworm has a deeper and more complex history than scientists previously believed and some may have originated in Australian dingoes. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Communications Biology. Heartworm disease is caused by the parasite Dirofilaria immitis. It is spread to dogs by mosquitoes and can be fatal. Adult worms live in the blood vessels of the heart and lungs and can grow up to 11.8 inches long (30 centimeters). Dog owners and veterinarians often report that worms can look like a strand of spaghetti in the heart. Heartworms taken from a dog’s heart. Image: University of Sydney. In the new study, an international team of researchers looked at over 100 heartworm genomes collected from …

Strange parasitic ‘mushroom’ plant abandoned photosynthesis and somehow flourished

Strange parasitic ‘mushroom’ plant abandoned photosynthesis and somehow flourished

Published by Jenni Sidey

In the damp understory of forests in Taiwan, mainland Japan, and Okinawa, a plant called Balanophora can fool you at first glance. Its knobby flower stalks look more like a mushroom than a flowering plant. Yet it is a plant, and a deeply unusual one: it lives almost entirely underground, fused to a host’s roots and drawing everything it needs from that host. That strange lifestyle is at the center of a new genetic survey led by researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), Kobe University, and the University of Taipei. The team’s work, published in New Phytologist, tracks how several Japanese and Taiwanese Balanophora species evolved as parasites and how they keep running core chemistry despite discarding the machinery most plants use to live. Study lead author Dr. Petra Svetlikova, a science and technology associate at OIST, summed up the puzzle like this: “Balanophora has lost much of what defines it as a plant, but retained enough to function as a parasite. It’s a fascinating example of how something so strange …

Roman soldiers defending Hadrian’s Wall had intestinal parasites

Roman soldiers defending Hadrian’s Wall had intestinal parasites

Published by skeptic

Roman soldiers might have had enemies inside their bodies Andrea Matone / Alamy Despite their reputation for advanced sanitation, ancient Romans at a major fort in northern England were probably suffering from a range of digestive ailments caused by parasites. The fort of Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s Wall and occupied by Roman soldiers from the 1st to the 4th century CE, would have been no place for anyone with a delicate stomach, suggest the results of excavations of the site’s sewage pits. Piers Mitchell at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues collected and analysed nearly 60 sediment samples from a latrine drain that serviced a communal toilet thought to have been in use in the 3rd century. Using microscopy, they found the eggs of two intestinal parasites: roundworm and whipworm. They also found traces of a single-celled parasite called Giardia duodenalis, which they identified using antibodies that bind exclusively to this organism’s proteins. All three cause gastrointestinal illnesses that can be severe in children, the elderly or immunocompromised people. “Despite their best efforts to create …