Neglected No More: Shining a Light on Schistosomiasis, Hope for a Parasitic Cure

Send us Fan MailMore than 200 million people around the world are infected with schistosomiasis, one of the neglected tropical diseases. It is caused by parasitic worms and prevalent in Africa, the Middle East, South America and Asia with close to 800 million people at risk for infection. If we in the U.S. are not in immediate threat of contracting the disease, why should we want to know more about it? To answer that and to explain more about the disease –– how people are infected, who is at risk, what the symptoms are and how it’s currently treated –– is Afzal Siddiqui, Ph.D., a Grover E. Murray Distinguished Professor, director of the TTUHSC Center for Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases and chair of the Department of Immunology and Molecular Microbiology in TTUHSC’s School of Medicine. Siddiqui also shares with us his decades-long work as part of a team developing a vaccine, updates us on the progress of the clinical trials and how work done on this vaccine could be useful to develop other vaccines as well. About SchistoShield®