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Our Mission:
Parasitic flatworms (trematodes) of humans and livestock and other animals cause diseases of major socio-economic importance globally. They have a major, long-term impact (directly and indirectly) on human health and cause substantial suffering.
The Food-borne Trematodiases (FBTs) represent a major group of the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) - more than 40 million people are infected with one or more of the FBTs, and 750 million (>10% of the world's population) others worldwide remain at risk of contracting FBTs. Over 100 species of food-borne trematodes are known to infect humans, although only several are responsible for much of the FBT disease burden. As with the NTDs at large, most FBTs affect the poorest people in rural areas of the endemic countries.
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All FBTs can be treated with anthelmintic drugs, praziquantel for most, triclabendazole for fascioliasis. However, people typically become re-infected because it is difficult to convince them to change age-old culinary habits. Vaccines would be a valuable adjunct to chemotherapy but no vaccines are available. FBT infections are most often diagnosed by identification of parasite eggs in the stool or sputum. Serological diagnostic tests have been described, but these tests are impractical for widespread use because they require continued access to adult parasites. Therefore, there is a need for standardized molecular diagnostic tools.
However, the incomplete protective response of the host and acquisition of anthelmintic resistance by an increasing number of parasitic trematodes hampered what use to be effective and long-lasting control strategies. Therefore, the challenges to improve control and diagnostics of parasitic trematode infections are multi-fold and no single category of information will meet them all. However, new information, such as trematode genomics, functional genomics and proteomics, can strengthen basic and applied biological research aimed at developing improvements. Our MISSION is through integrated approaches to accelerate progress towards developing more efficient and sustainable parasitic trematode control and diagnostic programs.
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Citation:
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To cite Trematode.net please use:
Martin J, Rosa BA, Ozersky P, Hallsworth-Pepin K, Zhang X, Bhonagiri-Palsikar V, Tyagi R, Wang Q, Choi Y, Gao X, McNulty S, Brindley PJ and Mitreva M (2014) Helminth.net: expansions to Nematode.net and an introduction to Trematode.net Nucleic Acids Research first published online November 12, 2014 doi: 10.1093/nar/gku1128
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