Bye Bye Bloodsucker?

Meet Ancylostoma ceylanicum the hookworm (pictured). An estimated 400 million people worldwide, primarily South East Asians, are currently hosting these parasites' brethren. Many will be unaware of their unwelcome guests, however, because symptoms of infection are slow to develop making diagnosis difficult. The worms clamp onto the lining of the small intestine, quietly gorging themselves on blood, causing the host to become anaemic and weak. In children, A. ceylanicum can also cause cognitive impairment and growth retardation, while in pregnant women the chronic blood loss can be fatal. Thankfully however the days of the hookworm’s free blood lunches may be running out. Scientists have sequenced the genome of A. ceylanicum, examined which genes are active during infection (of a model animal), and from this have identified candidate proteins for developing a vaccine – which, if successful, may protect many millions of people from falling victim to the insidious freeloader.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image by CDC's Public Health Image Library on Wikimedia Commons
• Originally published under a Creative Commons Licence
• Research published in Nature Genetics, March 2015