BACKGROUND Wuchereria bancrofti, Brugia malayi and Brugia timori infect over 100 million people worldwide and are the causative agents of lymphatic filariasis. Some parasite carriers are amicrofilaremic whilst others facilitate mosquito-based disease transmission through blood-circulating microfilariae (Mf). Recent findings, obtained largely from animal model systems, suggest that polymorphonuc...

The filarial nematode Mansonella perstans is endemic throughout Africa, northern South America and the Caribbean. Interestingly, M. perstans-infected individuals present no distinct clinical picture associated with certain pathology. Due to its relatively silent nature, research on this tropical disease has been neglected, especially M. perstans-driven immune responses. A hindrance in obtaining...

The speed of the spread of Internet worms increased dramatically in recent years. Moreover it is certain that it will continue to increase in the near future with the increase in available bandwidth and network resources. The fastest known worm (only in literature) is the Flash worm, which can infect over a million hosts in less than one second. This paper presents a variant of the Flash worm t...

691 The genus Dirofilaria includes various species that are natural parasites of dogs, cats, foxes and wild mammals. Dirofilaria immitis is the species occurring in the right ventricle and pulmonary artery of the dogs. The worm commonly known as dog heart worm, is widely dispersed and found in the tropics, subtropics and temperate zones. Another naturally occurring species commonly encountered ...

BACKGROUND  Schistosomiasis elicits cross-regulatory immune responses, but it is unclear how antihelminthic treatment affects this balance. This study integrates data on 13 cytokines elicited by 3 schistosome to examine how praziquantel treatment alters immune polarization and whether post-treatment cytokine profiles influence reinfection status. METHODS  Venous blood from 72 Schistosoma haem...

Female Blackface lambs expected to exhibit genetic variability for resistance to gastrointestinal nematodes, were either exposed to continuous experimental infections of Teladorsagia circumcincta or were sham-dosed to monitor phenotypic responses to infection. As a measure of parasitism and host response, worm-eggs in faeces (faecal egg count, FEC) were counted over a 3-month period and worm bu...

Code analysis and simulation of network worm infection are useful methods to evaluate how it spreads and its effects [1]. But a bug in infection algorithm or the way of implementing a random number generator etc. affects the retrieval behavior of network worm infection. It is important to evaluate the retrieval behavior of network worm infection in an experimental environment for complementing ...

Giant and stable worm micelles formed from poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-based diblock copolymer amphiphiles have the potential advantage compared to smaller assemblies for delivery of a large quantity of hydrophobic drugs or dyes per carrier. Here we show that worm micelles can be targeted to cells with internalization and delivery of nontoxic dyes as well as cytotoxic drugs. Constituent copolym...

Nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-containing protein 2 (NOD2) recognizes muramyl dipeptide (MDP) of bacterial cell walls, triggering NFκB-induced pro-inflammation. As most human pathogenic filariae contain Wolbachia endobacteria that synthesize the MDP-containing cell wall precursor lipid II, NOD2's role during infection with the rodent filaria Litomosoides sigmodontis was investigated....

Received 18 Jul 2015 Accepted 10 Dec 2015 Abstract Dioctophyma renale infection is found in a wide range of mammalian species, typically in temperate areas of the world. Here, we report for the first time, the parasitism of a domestic dog by D. renale in Hamedan, Iran, a mountainous cold region, lacking significant amounts of rainfall, high humidity and temperature. A 2.5 yr old male mixed bree...