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SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- A group of researchers at Stanford University has combined live observation, mathematical insights and robots to reveal the movement of parasitic larvae through the water and then cause schistosomiasis, a tropical disease, among people.


People become infected with schistosomiasis when the larval form of the parasite leaves the freshwater snail host Jordan Howard Jersey , swims through the water and penetrates human skin.


Once in a person, the larvae develop into adult schistosomes. The female parasites later release eggs, which are either passed out of the body through urine and stool or trapped in bodily tissues, triggering an immune response and large-scale organ damage.


When the eggs from urine or stool enter a water body with the freshwater snail hosts, the cycle begins again.


"We started thinking about the ecological context for the schistosomiasis disease cycle when, out in the field, we were seeing the terrible trauma it inflicts on people Roquan Smith Jersey ," said Manu Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford and senior author of a study published on Monday in the journal Nature Physics.


"It manifests over long periods of time, and if the water body near you is infected, there is a very high likelihood that you will get the disease. So, effectively, you can take drugs that could cure you for some time but you get re-infected again."


Schistosomiasis infection often produces abdominal pain, diarrhea and blood in the stool or urine. It can also cause learning deficiencies in children and an inability to work in adults that traps families in a poverty cycle.


Over the years Khalil Mack Jersey , adults can develop bladder cancer or severe kidney damage, which reduces their quality of life. In some cases the disease results in death.


It disproportionately impacts people who live in poverty, as they are more likely to be vulnerable to infection because they often have less access to adequate sanitation or to safe water for drinking, chores, recreation, fishing or agriculture. Even after treatment, people are often re-infected through their constant contact with contaminated water.


The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 258 million people required preventive treatment for schistosomiasis in 2014 Wholesale Bears Jerseys , with an estimated 20,000 deaths.


Prakash turned his attention to preventing infections at the first place and decided to investigate how schistosomiasis larvae swim to find a human host. This is a valuable question because, in its larval form, the parasite has no feeding mechanism and must find a host within about 12 hours or die. It stands to reason, then, that the larvae likely have some special, extremely efficient swimming skills.


"This was unlike anything I had seen before Cheap Bears Jerseys ," Deepak Krishnamurthy, a PhD student in the Prakash Lab and lead author of the study, was quoted as saying in a news release from Stanford, in northern California on the U.S. west coast.


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