Parasites are ubiquitous in nature and can be costly to animal fitness, so hosts have evolved behavioural counter-strategies to mitigate infection risk. We investigated feeding-related infection-avoidance strategies in Japanese macaques via field-experimentation and observation. We first examined risk sensitivity during foraging tasks involving faecally contaminated or debris-covered food items...

BACKGROUND Geohelminth infections are highly prevalent infectious diseases of childhood in many regions of the Tropics, and are associated with significant morbidity especially among pre-school and school-age children. There is growing concern that geohelminth infections, particularly exposures occurring during early life in utero through maternal infections or during infancy, may affect vaccin...

BACKGROUND Maternal geohelminth infections during pregnancy may protect against allergy development in childhood. OBJECTIVE We sought to investigate the effect of maternal geohelminths on the development of eczema, wheeze, and atopy during the first 3 years of life. METHODS A cohort of 2404 neonates was followed to 3 years of age in a rural district in coastal Ecuador. Data on wheeze and ec...

1 This study was sponsored by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), process no 503680-2003/6. 2 Universidade Federal da Bahia, Escola de Nutrição. Av. Araújo Pinho, 32, Campus Universitário Canela, 40110-170, Salvador, BA, Brasil. Correspondência para/Correspondence to: R.C.R. SILVA. E-mail: . Association between geohelminth infections and p...

BACKGROUND Geohelminth infection is a major health problem of children from rural areas of developing countries. In an attempt to reduce this burden, the Department of Health of the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) established in 1998 a programme for helminth control that aimed at regularly treating primary school children for schistosomiasis and intestinal helminths. This article describes the ...

To investigate the potential immunomodulatory effects of concurrent ascariasis on the cytokine response to a live oral vaccine, we measured cytokine responses to cholera toxin B subunit (CT-B) following vaccination with the live oral cholera vaccine CVD 103-HgR in Ascaris lumbricoides-infected subjects randomized in a double-blind study to receive two doses of either albendazole or placebo prio...

Background Strongyloides stercoralis, a geohelminth which affects humans, has a cosmopolitan distribution in the tropical and subtropical areas but is sporadic in temperate countries like Romania. Acquired perforating disorders are a group of uncommon skin conditions characterized by transepidermal extrusion of dermal components, usually occurring in patients with chronic renal failure and/or d...