from april 2009 to december 2011, 44 dead hedgehogs (erinaceus europaeus) were collected incidentally from areas of urmia, iran. the overall prevalence of helminth infections was 95.0%. specific parasites and their prevalences were: physalopteraclausa(93.0%), crenosoma striatum (61.0%), capillariaaerophila(9.0%), capillariasspp.(4.0%), brachylaemuserinacei(2.0%) and hymenolepiserinacei(16.0%). ...

Characterisation of protective helminth acquired immunity in humans or experimental models has focused on effector responses with little work conducted on memory responses. Here we show for the first time, that human helminth infection is associated with altered proportions of the CD4+ memory T cells, with an associated alteration of T(H)1 responses. The reduced CD4+ memory T cell proportions a...

BACKGROUND Helminth infections can negatively affect the immunologic host control, which may increase the risk of progression from latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection to tuberculosis (TB) disease and alter the clinical presentation of TB. We assessed the prevalence and determined the clinical relevance of helminth co-infection among TB patients and household contact controls in urban Ta...

BACKGROUND Foci of the HIV epidemic and helminthic infections largely overlap geographically. Treatment options for helminth infections are limited, and there is a paucity of drug-development research in this area. Limited evidence suggests that antiretroviral therapy (ART) reduces prevalence of helminth infections in HIV-infected individuals. We investigated whether ART exposure and cotrimoxaz...

BACKGROUND Helminth infection and malaria remain major causes of ill-health in the tropics and subtropics. There are several shared risk factors (e.g., poverty), and hence, helminth infection and malaria overlap geographically and temporally. However, the extent and consequences of helminth-Plasmodium co-infection at different spatial scales are poorly understood. METHODOLOGY This study was c...

Leading hypotheses to explain helminth-mediated protection against autoimmunity postulate that type 2 or regulatory immune responses induced by helminth infections in the host limit pathogenic Th1-driven autoimmune responses. We tested these hypotheses by investigating whether infection with the filarial nematode Litomosoides sigmodontis prevents diabetes onset in IL-4-deficient NOD mice and wh...

BACKGROUND Approximately one-third of the world population is infected with M. tuberculosis and helminths (Kariminia et al. (2009), Walson et al. (2010)). Pregnancy and Helminth infection are known to suppress the TH1 response (Kariminia et al. (2009), Elias et al. (2006)) on which the QuantiFERON Gold in Tube (QFT-GIT) assay, that measures the released IFN-γ upon in vitro stimulation with myco...

BACKGROUND It has been hypothesized that helminth infections increase HIV susceptibility by enhancing systemic immune activation and hence contribute to elevated HIV-1 transmission in sub-Saharan Africa. OBJECTIVE To study systemic immune activation and HIV-1 co-receptor expression in relation to different helminth infections and in response to helminth treatment. METHODS HIV-negative adult...