July 22, 2009 • 12 mins
Shistosomiasis is a parasitic infection that significantly affects HIV transmission in Africans, particularly females. Find out how prevention of this "snail fever" could impact the spread of HIV in Africa in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From house stuff works dot Com? Hey there, and welcome
to the podcast. Is this Kristen and this is Molly,
So Molly the house stuff works dot Com office has
(00:23):
been a buzz with parasites lately. Yes, if you haven't noticed,
um there is the show on Animal Planet that is
coming out called Monsters Inside Me and it's all about parasites.
And we have been trying to think of ways to
talk about how parasites relate specifically to women for the podcast.
So you and I did a little bit of research
(00:45):
this week and I found some pretty compelling information that
I was I was actually surprised to stumble on. And
it has to do with um a possible link between
parasites and HIV among African women. And HIV among women
is a huge problem in Africa because, according to the
Global Coalition of Women in AIDS, of people fifteen to
(01:10):
twenty four infected with HIV our female and more specifically
in Southern Africa, fifty seven percent of infected young people
are female, and in many rural areas in many rural areas.
Excuse me, For every man that is HIV positive, anywhere
from one point three to six point four women are
now infected. So obviously this is a huge global problem.
(01:32):
Those are really some staggering statistics, and a lot of
the policy that tries to address this problem addresses risky behaviors.
You know, we try and spread the word about safe
sex using condoms, but you know, in doing this research
on parasites, we learned that educating people just about parasites
could have a huge implication on those statistics. Right, And
one major source that we ran across was a chapter
(01:54):
in a book put out by the International Food Policy
and Research Institute, And this chat after it was written
by Eileen still Wagon, and she's talking about addressing HIV
co factors for infections such as, like you mentioned, parasites,
malnutrition and these other things aside from just sexual behavior
that are contributing to high rates of HIV and AH transmission. Right,
(02:18):
still Wagon is talking about proven co factors, things that
when they happen in conjunction with risky behaviors UH increase
the chance of transmitting HIV and then actually increase the
rate at which it UH multiplies in your body, so
you become sicker faster. So one of the big co
factors is malnutrition. When you don't have enough to eat,
(02:39):
it compromises your immune system. You know you're already at
risk for getting sick, and when you know you add
in a sexual encounter on top of that, there's a
greater likelihood that HIV will be spread because the rates
of transmission between two healthy adults are much lower than
the rates of transmission between two unhealthy people. Right, and
on top of malnutrition, especially in sub Saharan Africa, parasites
(03:05):
aggravate that problem. And they're already immunocompromise, and once they
have parasites that are also draining the nutrients inside of
their body, that makes it even harder if HIV innerser
body for them to even fight it off. And we
hear a lot about as far as parasites go, we
hear a lot about malaria. Over three million people in
(03:25):
Africa's suffer from acute malaria each year and almost one
million children Africa die malaria annually, and it stimulates HIV replication.
But on top of that, there's another less prominent parasite
related disease, that's been getting a lot more attention that
could have a key, especially for preventing HIV and women,
(03:48):
and that is something called shisto semiasis. That's right. And
there are two d seven million cases of shisto semiasis
in the world and nine of them are in Africa.
So obviously this is a huge problem in Africa. And
what have ones with this condition is you basically get
it by going into snail infested waters streams where you know,
these people might be going to do their laundry, uh,
(04:09):
to wash, to play, you know. The thing that kind
of hit home for me and reading this chapter by
a lean Still Wagnus when she says the riskiest thing
for these African children and it's not, you know, a
sexual encounter, it's just going swimming basically, right. What happens
specifically in in these freshwater areas are traumatode flat worms
um that are larval forms of parasites that are released
(04:32):
by these freshwater snails and they get into the skin
of the people who are, like you said, washing their
clothes or going swimming or whatever they might be doing.
And then the larvae will develop into adult schistostomes which
live in the blood vessels and then the parasites release
eggs um which pass out of the body in urine
(04:54):
or feces, and others are trapped in body tissues. And
one of the major problems between shift to semiosis and
HIV is the fact that a lot of the parasites
will develop in the genito urinary tract, right, So you've
got them on the vagina, You've got them in the cervix,
and that's sort of the main place where HIV can
(05:14):
be transmitted. So you've got people, you know, with a
lot of open source basically because once the worms are
fully in there, you're left with a lot of source.
It almost looks like a sexually transmitted infection, which is
why a lot of people don't seek treatment for this,
because it's a lot of stigma to go to a
doctor and say, you know, I've got bloody vaginal source, right, Molly.
(05:36):
And because of all of those factors combined, uh still
Wagon points out that, with the possible exception of malaria shista,
semiosis is the most significant parasitic co factor of HIV
transmission because of where they're colonizing and how the making
the perfect entry point for HIV virus. Because basically once
(05:59):
the virus is there, it's just got all sorts of
body fluids to interact with the blood stream with that
open sore gives UH the HIV a direct trans direct
access to the bloodstream, right and straight for the blood stream,
making an infection and then as you said, replicating much
more quickly than it might otherwise. Right, And this is
happening in men as well. Men can also develop shist
(06:20):
a semiasis, but it's not creating as open of an
entry point for HIV transmission as it would be developing
in a female cervix, right, And you know, still Wagons
at the end mentions a vaccine for this. But we
happened upon a New York Times article that's very recent
May two thousand nine by Donald G McNeil uh talks
(06:42):
about a drug called and I'm probably not going to
pronounce this, right, Mr McNeil uh, pras a quantal And
they're saying that for thirty two cents per child, you
could vaccinate children against UH shisto somiasis in the first place, right,
so they would never um actually these parasites, and so
they would have a lowered risk of HIV transmission. According
(07:05):
to all of this, this research that's been done. But
there is one factor to this is that you still
have to address those UM sexual behavioral co factors because
it can't obviously cure HIV. I mean this is talking
about vaccinting children. You still have to talk to like
the older females and men in the communities. But it
(07:25):
could make a big impact. And there is a pilot
program in breaking a fast out um for seventy million
toddlers in school aged children UM who are going to
be treated with this vaccine for two million dollars repeating
every two years for a decade. And this has been
hailed as potentially Africa's thirty two cents solution because it
(07:47):
could have a huge impact on lowering the HIV transmission rate. Yeah,
because you know, one of the reasons I should plaly
point out why you would give this drug to the
children is it it kills the worm before they can
create the strees. It doesn't cure the source, so people
adults whore I have this will have to seek alternate
means of treatment by ultimately, still Wagon's argument in this
chapter we keep citing is that we need to broaden
(08:09):
our HIV policy in Africa, so it educates people about
this potential parasite. Uh. You know, obviously we need better
nutrition methods down there, but it's an interesting way to
think about policy as not just you know, teaching people
in Africa to use condoms. Right, And like you said, um,
the stigma associated with the side effects if she s
(08:31):
a surmises if they have these pilot programs and women
are more aware of what could be happening, that might
make them more apt to go seek medical attention if
they do have those source because they might recognize that
it might not be an STD, that it could be
this parasitic infection, so it could have a ripple effect.
It could, and we hope and of course we hope
that it does. Yeah, So if you want to learn
more about parasites in general, then watch Animal Planet on
(08:56):
Wednesday nights nine pm because they're gonna cover all sorts
of things on monsters inside me related to parasites. Um.
I don't know if they're going to be parasites and
women in Africa, but who knows. And since small and
I just touched on a very small portion of the
issue of women and aids globally, if you would like
to learn more about that, I highly recommend um googling
(09:19):
Global Coalition of Women and AIDS and heading over to
their website. They have a lot of great information and
good statistics as well. And that's a coproject of the
United Nations and just we have a lot of parasite
infro in general at the blogs that has stuff works Kristen,
I have a blog. We've done each a few parasite posts,
(09:39):
so check out how to stuff but how stuff works
dot com listener mild Yes, So we did have a
few observant listeners who realized that we didn't quite answer
the question we set out to in the podcast, our
organic Foods Healthier. I blame this on the fact is
that we wanted to just really talk about food. We
(09:59):
were hungry when we recorded the podcast. We wanted to
touch on the foods that are better to buy organic
and kind of skimped on the question. So a lot
of people wrote in saying, well, is it true? Can
uh you know the pesticides pesticides that are on these
foods harm me? Can they kill me? What's the deal
with the pesticides? All right, So and I will instead
(10:19):
of reading the listener mail, I guess I'm reading listener
response mail. This is the answer that I offered out
to a couple of listeners who wrote in about this,
and I said, from what I can gather, the jury
is still out on weather and how pesticides from the
food we eat really harm the body in large doses.
Researchers has shown that they can fry our nervous system
(10:42):
and disrupt our endocrine systems, which is especially harmful for
children since it affects secondary sex characteristics and development. And
according to the Environmental Working Group, pesticides and food are
most harmful to fetal and child development rather than adults.
And the BBC is also reported that some pesticides promote
bacteria growth on some food that can lead to food poisoning.
(11:06):
At the same time, there are plenty of stories out
there as well that refute the health and environmental benefits
of organics and uh I look for a little insight
on the e p a's role in regulating the pesticides
on the food we eat, and basically, the e p
A sets what are called tolerance levels of how much
of pesticide residue can be left on food that we
(11:27):
buy in the grocery store without being harmful to humans,
So there is regulation out there. Even though if you're
buying a non organic apple and it is covered and
maybe a little bit of pesticide and that that wax
gives it that glossy sheen, supposedly it is within the
realm of safety for human consumption according to e p
(11:48):
A and probably FDA standards as well. And you know,
I think it just sort of I think it can
come down to the individual. Christ and I are both
raised on non organic food. We both seem to think
we're okay. But we did a email from a listener
whose son, you know it, started to develop a weird
odor and they found that when they switched him off
the milk with growth hormones, he did much better. So
(12:08):
it's it's something I think we can monitor through observation,
and as Kristen pointed out, it might be a more
sensitive issue when someone is a child or an infant
right or if you are pregnant. Yes, So I hope
that answers some of y'all's questions about organics, and if not,
you should head on over to how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(12:34):
Because it how stuff works dot Com. Want more how
stuff works. Check out our blogs on the house stuff
works dot com home page. Brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From house stuff works dot Com? Hey there, and welcome
to the podcast. Is this Kristen and this is Molly,
So Molly the house stuff works dot Com office has
(00:23):
been a buzz with parasites lately. Yes, if you haven't noticed,
um there is the show on Animal Planet that is
coming out called Monsters Inside Me and it's all about parasites.
And we have been trying to think of ways to
talk about how parasites relate specifically to women for the podcast.
So you and I did a little bit of research
(00:45):
this week and I found some pretty compelling information that
I was I was actually surprised to stumble on. And
it has to do with um a possible link between
parasites and HIV among African women. And HIV among women
is a huge problem in Africa because, according to the
Global Coalition of Women in AIDS, of people fifteen to
(01:10):
twenty four infected with HIV our female and more specifically
in Southern Africa, fifty seven percent of infected young people
are female, and in many rural areas in many rural areas.
Excuse me, For every man that is HIV positive, anywhere
from one point three to six point four women are
now infected. So obviously this is a huge global problem.
(01:32):
Those are really some staggering statistics, and a lot of
the policy that tries to address this problem addresses risky behaviors.
You know, we try and spread the word about safe
sex using condoms, but you know, in doing this research
on parasites, we learned that educating people just about parasites
could have a huge implication on those statistics. Right, And
one major source that we ran across was a chapter
(01:54):
in a book put out by the International Food Policy
and Research Institute, And this chat after it was written
by Eileen still Wagon, and she's talking about addressing HIV
co factors for infections such as, like you mentioned, parasites,
malnutrition and these other things aside from just sexual behavior
that are contributing to high rates of HIV and AH transmission. Right,
(02:18):
still Wagon is talking about proven co factors, things that
when they happen in conjunction with risky behaviors UH increase
the chance of transmitting HIV and then actually increase the
rate at which it UH multiplies in your body, so
you become sicker faster. So one of the big co
factors is malnutrition. When you don't have enough to eat,
(02:39):
it compromises your immune system. You know you're already at
risk for getting sick, and when you know you add
in a sexual encounter on top of that, there's a
greater likelihood that HIV will be spread because the rates
of transmission between two healthy adults are much lower than
the rates of transmission between two unhealthy people. Right, and
on top of malnutrition, especially in sub Saharan Africa, parasites
(03:05):
aggravate that problem. And they're already immunocompromise, and once they
have parasites that are also draining the nutrients inside of
their body, that makes it even harder if HIV innerser
body for them to even fight it off. And we
hear a lot about as far as parasites go, we
hear a lot about malaria. Over three million people in
(03:25):
Africa's suffer from acute malaria each year and almost one
million children Africa die malaria annually, and it stimulates HIV replication.
But on top of that, there's another less prominent parasite
related disease, that's been getting a lot more attention that
could have a key, especially for preventing HIV and women,
(03:48):
and that is something called shisto semiasis. That's right. And
there are two d seven million cases of shisto semiasis
in the world and nine of them are in Africa.
So obviously this is a huge problem in Africa. And
what have ones with this condition is you basically get
it by going into snail infested waters streams where you know,
these people might be going to do their laundry, uh,
(04:09):
to wash, to play, you know. The thing that kind
of hit home for me and reading this chapter by
a lean Still Wagnus when she says the riskiest thing
for these African children and it's not, you know, a
sexual encounter, it's just going swimming basically, right. What happens
specifically in in these freshwater areas are traumatode flat worms
um that are larval forms of parasites that are released
(04:32):
by these freshwater snails and they get into the skin
of the people who are, like you said, washing their
clothes or going swimming or whatever they might be doing.
And then the larvae will develop into adult schistostomes which
live in the blood vessels and then the parasites release
eggs um which pass out of the body in urine
(04:54):
or feces, and others are trapped in body tissues. And
one of the major problems between shift to semiosis and
HIV is the fact that a lot of the parasites
will develop in the genito urinary tract, right, So you've
got them on the vagina, You've got them in the cervix,
and that's sort of the main place where HIV can
(05:14):
be transmitted. So you've got people, you know, with a
lot of open source basically because once the worms are
fully in there, you're left with a lot of source.
It almost looks like a sexually transmitted infection, which is
why a lot of people don't seek treatment for this,
because it's a lot of stigma to go to a
doctor and say, you know, I've got bloody vaginal source, right, Molly.
(05:36):
And because of all of those factors combined, uh still
Wagon points out that, with the possible exception of malaria shista,
semiosis is the most significant parasitic co factor of HIV
transmission because of where they're colonizing and how the making
the perfect entry point for HIV virus. Because basically once
(05:59):
the virus is there, it's just got all sorts of
body fluids to interact with the blood stream with that
open sore gives UH the HIV a direct trans direct
access to the bloodstream, right and straight for the blood stream,
making an infection and then as you said, replicating much
more quickly than it might otherwise. Right, And this is
happening in men as well. Men can also develop shist
(06:20):
a semiasis, but it's not creating as open of an
entry point for HIV transmission as it would be developing
in a female cervix, right, And you know, still Wagons
at the end mentions a vaccine for this. But we
happened upon a New York Times article that's very recent
May two thousand nine by Donald G McNeil uh talks
(06:42):
about a drug called and I'm probably not going to
pronounce this, right, Mr McNeil uh, pras a quantal And
they're saying that for thirty two cents per child, you
could vaccinate children against UH shisto somiasis in the first place, right,
so they would never um actually these parasites, and so
they would have a lowered risk of HIV transmission. According
(07:05):
to all of this, this research that's been done. But
there is one factor to this is that you still
have to address those UM sexual behavioral co factors because
it can't obviously cure HIV. I mean this is talking
about vaccinting children. You still have to talk to like
the older females and men in the communities. But it
(07:25):
could make a big impact. And there is a pilot
program in breaking a fast out um for seventy million
toddlers in school aged children UM who are going to
be treated with this vaccine for two million dollars repeating
every two years for a decade. And this has been
hailed as potentially Africa's thirty two cents solution because it
(07:47):
could have a huge impact on lowering the HIV transmission rate. Yeah,
because you know, one of the reasons I should plaly
point out why you would give this drug to the
children is it it kills the worm before they can
create the strees. It doesn't cure the source, so people
adults whore I have this will have to seek alternate
means of treatment by ultimately, still Wagon's argument in this
chapter we keep citing is that we need to broaden
(08:09):
our HIV policy in Africa, so it educates people about
this potential parasite. Uh. You know, obviously we need better
nutrition methods down there, but it's an interesting way to
think about policy as not just you know, teaching people
in Africa to use condoms. Right, And like you said, um,
the stigma associated with the side effects if she s
(08:31):
a surmises if they have these pilot programs and women
are more aware of what could be happening, that might
make them more apt to go seek medical attention if
they do have those source because they might recognize that
it might not be an STD, that it could be
this parasitic infection, so it could have a ripple effect.
It could, and we hope and of course we hope
that it does. Yeah, So if you want to learn
more about parasites in general, then watch Animal Planet on
(08:56):
Wednesday nights nine pm because they're gonna cover all sorts
of things on monsters inside me related to parasites. Um.
I don't know if they're going to be parasites and
women in Africa, but who knows. And since small and
I just touched on a very small portion of the
issue of women and aids globally, if you would like
to learn more about that, I highly recommend um googling
(09:19):
Global Coalition of Women and AIDS and heading over to
their website. They have a lot of great information and
good statistics as well. And that's a coproject of the
United Nations and just we have a lot of parasite
infro in general at the blogs that has stuff works Kristen,
I have a blog. We've done each a few parasite posts,
(09:39):
so check out how to stuff but how stuff works
dot com listener mild Yes, So we did have a
few observant listeners who realized that we didn't quite answer
the question we set out to in the podcast, our
organic Foods Healthier. I blame this on the fact is
that we wanted to just really talk about food. We
(09:59):
were hungry when we recorded the podcast. We wanted to
touch on the foods that are better to buy organic
and kind of skimped on the question. So a lot
of people wrote in saying, well, is it true? Can
uh you know the pesticides pesticides that are on these
foods harm me? Can they kill me? What's the deal
with the pesticides? All right, So and I will instead
(10:19):
of reading the listener mail, I guess I'm reading listener
response mail. This is the answer that I offered out
to a couple of listeners who wrote in about this,
and I said, from what I can gather, the jury
is still out on weather and how pesticides from the
food we eat really harm the body in large doses.
Researchers has shown that they can fry our nervous system
(10:42):
and disrupt our endocrine systems, which is especially harmful for
children since it affects secondary sex characteristics and development. And
according to the Environmental Working Group, pesticides and food are
most harmful to fetal and child development rather than adults.
And the BBC is also reported that some pesticides promote
bacteria growth on some food that can lead to food poisoning.
(11:06):
At the same time, there are plenty of stories out
there as well that refute the health and environmental benefits
of organics and uh I look for a little insight
on the e p a's role in regulating the pesticides
on the food we eat, and basically, the e p
A sets what are called tolerance levels of how much
of pesticide residue can be left on food that we
(11:27):
buy in the grocery store without being harmful to humans,
So there is regulation out there. Even though if you're
buying a non organic apple and it is covered and
maybe a little bit of pesticide and that that wax
gives it that glossy sheen, supposedly it is within the
realm of safety for human consumption according to e p
(11:48):
A and probably FDA standards as well. And you know,
I think it just sort of I think it can
come down to the individual. Christ and I are both
raised on non organic food. We both seem to think
we're okay. But we did a email from a listener
whose son, you know it, started to develop a weird
odor and they found that when they switched him off
the milk with growth hormones, he did much better. So
(12:08):
it's it's something I think we can monitor through observation,
and as Kristen pointed out, it might be a more
sensitive issue when someone is a child or an infant
right or if you are pregnant. Yes, So I hope
that answers some of y'all's questions about organics, and if not,
you should head on over to how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(12:34):
Because it how stuff works dot Com. Want more how
stuff works. Check out our blogs on the house stuff
works dot com home page. Brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
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