Worm Workaround

Medical research is never done. Praziquantel has been an effective treatment for schistosomiasis, a tropical disease caused by parasitic flatworms, since the 1980s, but there are now growing fears that drug resistance might be starting to emerge. Backup treatments are therefore needed, so researchers have turned to an old compound that might have untapped potential, called meclonazepam. They found it successfully killed the parasites (pictured, seven-week infection worms without treatment, left, and after exposure to meclonazepam, right). The team examined the impact the treatment had on the worms’ genetic activity and saw changes in the expression (switched on/up or off/down) of genes unique to flatworms. Importantly the impact of meclonazepam was the same on worms susceptible or resistant to the conventional treatment, suggesting it could be a powerful alternative therapy in the fight against schistosomiasis.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

Website

• Image from work by Clair R. Henthorn and Paul McCusker, and colleagues
• Department of Pathobiological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, April 2025