Oh hey, it's the ghost of podcasts past Ali Ward. I am bringing you an early lost episode from twenty seventeen for today twenty twenty one. I never ever ever thought I had aired this one. This one was dead to me. It has been sealed tightly in a vault
for three and a half years, in shame. It's one of the very very first interviews I ever did for Ologies, before the podcast even really existed, before there was like a format, before I figured my shit out, before any pandemics, and definitely before I knew how to use sound recording equipment. And so I need to warn you. If this is your very very first episode of Ologies you're ever listening to, please go away, just stop. Just put a pin in
this episode, turn around, pick another episode. Okay, Ologites, people who have been around long enough to know all my secrets and call me Dad, this one's for you. This episode again dead and gone. Every time I thought about this interview, I cringe, and even like now, I literally got like tinkles up my spine and I shuddered one
hundred percent honest. Okay, So here's what happened. It was June twenty seventeen, before I ever released the first Ologies episode, I went to London for work and I packed all my audio equipment just for this interview, and I met up at the Natural History Museum of London for an interview about parasitology. I did the mic check, not realizing that the two handheld microphones were picking up nothing and instead it was just the little built in mic capturing
us talking. Now we're able to sweeten the sound, make it work a little bit. But before I tell you the rest, just a really quick thanks to all the folks on Patreon, Patreon dot com, Sashologies. Thank you everyone to everyone who rates and subscribes, especially people who write reviews such as this one from Hi my name is
who listens while boiling coyote bones in a lab? They say, and they wrote, I'm truly in tears thinking about how Ologies has filled my heart and brain with excitement and joy while living some of my darkest days of this year. Thank you, Hi my name is, Please don't make me cry. So the topic is bill harziology and you're like, the fuck is that? Okay?
So?
Bilharzia are types of parasitic worms, and bill Harzia comes from the name of the guy who first identified these old critters a German dude named Theodore Bill Hars really the world's first Bill harzyologist, and because I was not great at interviewing it, the questions are all over the place. We talk about parasites, but mostly Bill Harzia, which cause schistosomiasis.
So I checked Bill harzyology. Bam, one Google result. This word has been used one time before in a typewriter written nineteen sixty World Health Organization report in regard to Bill harziologists or scientists who study the disease caused by
blood flukes. It's on. So this ologist has likely completely forgotten that they sat down for a twenty seventeen interview for a podcast that didn't exist yet, But in her email agreeing to do it, she promised, I will bring you some lovely slash nasty specimens, and that she did so. She is communications and program manager for the Global Schistasamiasis Alliance and her background is in tropical diseases and biomedical research. She did a postdoc at the Natural History Museum where
she still does research. So curl up, put on your skinny genes from four years ago. I still wear mine and get ready to ingest some lost episode, vintage baby ologies, banter about curly worms, vials of vile creatures, snails, flatworm drama, febrile delirium, spooning, outmoded gender roles, historical weight loss, pills, unfortunate snacks, and some new therapies with parasite researcher and bilharziologist doctor Anuke Goubras.
Well, we're recording, but again, Karl is out to take you on to test your levels.
Okay, not entirely sure what to say, but it's good.
Your level looks good.
As it turns out, her levels were not good, and go Res got it. Also in twenty seventeen, I hadn't yet started asking the guest pronouns, but I checked in her Twitter bio, says she her.
So, I currently I am the communications and program manager for an organization called the Global Shista Saisis Alliance, and that is going to require some explaining. So I'm based at the museum, but it's actually an independent body that looks at a particular parasite and a particular parasitic disease called schistasamisis that infects two hundred and fifty million people worldwide,
particularly in some Soaran Africa. It's caused by a parasitic worm called shista selma or shist of selms, which I have some samples of here.
And we're looking jars in front of us, and it looks like there's just squiggles, evil squiggles, evil white squiggles in the bottom of them.
Yeah, they are evil white squiggles.
What's the name s Where does that come from?
Shista soma?
I think it comes to describe the actual body of these worms. So they're quite unusual looking in that they.
Look round like roundworms, but.
They actually are flatworms that are curved in, or the males are. They're flat and curved in, and they create this little groove and the female worm who is around sits in that groove and it's sort of almost like a sort of split body. There's another stage, they're larval stage, which also has a split tail, so that also is like a shist.
So a shist is a split.
So shister split soma body. And though there are over twenty five recognized species, only a small handful infect humans, and the size varies depending on the species. But in their tiny jars in front of us, they look like short,
errant threads picked off a cotton sweater. Now under a microscope, the paired couples looked kind of like a pink green bean slightly a jar and acting as a hammock for another much smaller pink green bean, which is just nestled in a sexy patriarchal groove that scientists call a gynocophoric canal. They're the couple engaged in uncomfortable PDA at a dinner party. Too close.
What are the ladies doing curled up in that?
So they're very traditional lifestyle.
They pair up male and female and they actually reside in the blood system of mammals. And the male is strong and muscular, and he holds onto the vein wall and the feeds. The female protects the female, and the female sits there and produces eggs. She just sits in this grove that he's made for her, juice eggs.
That's all she does.
That's so like atomic family.
Yes, that's way so traditional.
What happened? These ladies aren't like getting out.
They have been documented cases of evidence that they do swap partners, but the females actually cannot produce eggs and become quite stunted if they're not paired up with males, so they clearly they have to actually exist paired up with a male in order to be able to feed themselves at it adequately. So yeah, that's quite in very empowerful.
No, it's not empowering at all.
So I was wondering how they pick mates in the dark, sticky tunnels of our blood vessels, and luckily I found a two thousand and nine International Journal of Parasitology paper titled the Sex Lives of Parasites Investigating the Mating System and Mechanisms of Sexual Selection of the human pathogen Schistosoma manson, And it had everything I never knew I wanted. Okay, first off, they are mostly monogamous. Wait, mostly your soulmate
lives in your body. Now, in this study, it was observed that the guys could stuff their groove with multiple ladies and only actually mate with one of them. Well, the other ones are just crammed in there like kind of sister worms. Wondering if they should have frozen some larvae. Now, does this mean that there are shy worms with no one to nap in their sex canal?
Well?
The study continues that quote male body size was positively related to reproductive success. So, wow, worms, I thought you were above it. But worm gossip is not over yet. So sometimes long term pairs get a divorce and the lady squirms out of the dude because there's another mate less related to her. So she's like, thank you so much for all the nutrients that you sucked from this person, but I got a piece because that guy is not my cousin like you are, and I wish you nothing
but the best. Please do not text me now. Hopefully another mate will come along and catch their eye or whatever.
They don't particularly have eyes or anything like that, so living in the blood system, it's all done by chemical cues.
So they just slip it out.
Yeah, so okay, now they are flatworms.
Yes, so they're tramatodes or flatworms, so sort of like the liver fluke, but the liver fluke lives in the liver, whereas in schistosomes are blood flukes. They live in the blood system of mammals including humans and also birds. Actually you get some schistosomes that infect birds, not the same ones though different species. So even the evil squiggly worms I've got in tubes right here, we've got a couple.
We have three different species that infect cattle in front of us and then this one here is the species that infects humans. It's called Schistosoma mansonai and it causes a disease called intestinal schistosomiasis, which can be fair found in a variety of countries, but mainly in Sub Saharan African countries and also in Brazil, and it's quite nasty.
It can cause quite severe organ damage, but it's a very gradual disease, so it builds up over time and people get more and more infected, they get more and more damage to their organs, and so they get infected when they're maybe children, and then by the time they're the age of thirty, they have lots of complications organ complications, like they could potentially have the swollen liver and damaged liver, so their liver isn't functioning properly and it could lead
to liver failure failure. But they can also get damage in the lungs, damage in the spleen, lots of complications that way. Another similar species, which is the Selma Hematobium, causes eurogenital shist of smisis and that is very painful, very nasty and can lead to bladder cancer, kidney failure, so it can cause sterility, can potentially increase HIV transmit and it's quite nasty.
So how did you get what did you study? How did you get.
Involved in parasites and shift aim because you're a parasitologist. Yes, right, yeah, I'm a parasitologist. I didn't start off as a parasitologist. So I always liked animals as a kid, and I always liked the marine.
Sort of environment. So I first started doing marine.
Zoology, studying animals of the sea, but we also had some general biology lectures and it was in one of those that we started learning about parasitic infections and it wasn't shift asilmes. It was a different parasite that we were learning about, one that's transmitted by insect bites, and I found it so fascinating, but suddenly decided that maybe I would pursue that a little bit more, and I started going to the parasite based lab sessions that they had.
I then decided to do my masters in parasites and the Biology and Control of Parasites at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
So yes, she got a back of Science at the University of Wales and a master's at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and then her PhD from Imperial College London in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. Now did she always have an aptitude for bill harziology?
Was it in her blood?
Proverbially?
What was your gateway parasite? What was the one from insects?
Yeah, it was.
I think it must have been tripan asamiasis not long word. All these parasites have long words. Yeah, But it's also known as shagas disease. It occurs in South America and it's really nasty.
I've heard of that.
They're transmitted by these big kissing bugs or assassin bugs they're also called, and they can cause quite a lot of damage to people and gradually make them.
Very very ill.
Again, these are all sort of gradual diseases, but shaggers can be very fatal.
Did Darwin possibly have that?
Yes?
He did, Actually he got There is this sort of myth that he even collected the insect that bit him, and it's in our collections. No, I wouldn't say that it's absolutely certain. It is a insect, one of these assassin bugs that he collected. Now, whether it's the one that bit him, I don't know.
But yeah, and.
So did he Did he die from it or did he suffer from from Shager's disease.
It's a good question, Actually he did. I think he did suffer from it, but I don't know if that is. I don't think he died from it, but might be wrong.
I remember a story of him being so excited about collecting bugs that he ran out of.
Hands, and so he put one in his mouth.
Oh no, okay, So I fact checked this.
And aside from unraveling the mysteries of evolution, Darwin was also that friend you had who was always trying to figure out why they were sick. And this dude was out there on boats trying to collect creatures while also barfing after every meal. He had CVS, which is not a disorder of elongated cash register receipts, but rather cyclic vomiting syndrome.
Oh, poor dude.
As well as ailments that modern day physicians looking back suspect were each Pylori bacteria, which causes ulcers and yes, shagas disease, which may have led to heart problems that led to his death. Now, given the poor Chuck was prone to fits of upchuck, it is no wonder he penned my most favorite journal snippet in eighteen sixty one quote, I am very poorly today and very stupid, and I hate everybody and everything. That is some relatable content. Okay, Now back to schistosome's So.
That was that quite interested?
Yeah, that learning about how the.
Control of this was controlling the disease in South America.
And so what is it about?
I mean, this isn't maybe a stupid question, but what is different from just being infected with so a bacteria versus a parasite?
Like when does something become parasitic?
Ah, that's a really good question.
And so you know loads of people who will argue that, you know, maybe bacteria are also parasites and things like or viruses, but really parasites and they tend to be things like malaria. So it's like a protozoan, which is malaria. Malaria as a protozoon it's a sort of simple cell cellular organism that lives in the blood. But then you can get other parasites that are like these shistos worms. Which are clearly much more complicated, much bigger multicellular organisms.
They have evolved very a very specific survival strategy.
If you want.
Parasites, it's more of a life strategy then a particular type of organism. So it very much has to do with anything that lives in or on another organism, taking nutrients and benefiting from that, but to the detriment of the host. So there will always be a host parasite relationship. Now that's why it's sort of Some people will argue that bacteria is similar to that, but there are a lot of free living bacteria and bacteria might may or may not cause you damage.
So part of being a parasite is the effect that it has on the host, and dictionaries defined a parasite is something that lives off a host quote without making a useful or adequate return. So they're not just the ones who don't chip in on the big dinner bill, but they never chip in like you can rely on them to not be reliable to chip in.
Yes, there's also an interesting relationship between the parasite and the host, and that it's not in the parasite's interest to kill you atright to kill the host outright. It wants the host to survive as long as possible so that it can reproduce, so it's not an a media killer like some other infections. Anthras, for example, will want the body to go straight back into the earth, so it'll kill straight away.
Anthrax by the Bye is a thrash metal band from the eighties whose name was chosen because one of the members read about a spore releasing bacterium of the same name that, if weaponized and inhaled, kills eighty five to ninety percent of patients who don't get treatment. So the band said they liked the name anthrax because it sounded sufficiently evil, and now I agree with them.
Whereas in the parasite wants actually the host to survive as long as possible so they can continue to reproduce and continue to send its offspring out there in whichever way it does, whether it's through another insect carrying its offspring off, or whether the offspring come out in the case of schistosounds with stool and urine entering the environment. There are different ways that parasites can transmit and continue their life cycle.
Do you ever like overly apply.
The strategies of parasites to like psychological things in your life.
Are you ever like your roommate where you're like.
Saying nutrients, like, do you ever does that ever relate to your psychology?
No?
I don't think so. I don't know that.
I tend to not really think of parasites in terms of humans, but I think potentially some things I like in terms of yeah, maybe in terms of sort of relationships, particularly when it comes to what parasites and hosts do, which is in the evolutionary arms race based on also called the red Queen hypothesis. The red Queen hypothesis comes from Lewis Carroll in where you have to run as fast as you can in order.
To stay in the same place.
So the parasite is constantly finding ways to infect the host. The host is constantly trying to find ways to prevent s parasitic infections, so they constantly have this battle where every time the host finds another way to stop infections or to stop the parasite from spreading, the parasite will find another way to get past that hurdle. So they're both running as fast as they can stay in the
same place. With the red Queen hypothesis, and that you can see in a lot of things and how the world works that we are constantly doing that.
So it's actually yeah, yes, Like who would have thought that bials of these tiny curlial words would be could cause such drama?
Who would have thought? Ali, Maybe the two hundred and fifty million people globally who have just a semiasis, or maybe the scientists who have dedicated their lives to finding treatments and cures. But yes, lady, who has never risked these parasitic flatworms spooning and boning in your life blood? They do cause trauma?
Yeah, might be slightly being slightly focusing on the negative aspects of parasites.
There are, believing or not some.
Positive aspects of them as well, so you can use them in positive ways. That can you use them in positive ways?
Okay?
To give an example, I think our museum curator, for example, she sometimes gets called in with live animals that have been confiscated from people who brought them into the country or different countries. The people have confiscated these animals, they don't know if the animal has come from the.
Wild or if it has indeed, as has.
Been claimed by the paperwork, by the person bringing in being bred domestically and therefore can be traded we taging like baby tigers, or well not baby tigers, but Comeleians for example, Okay, like Madagascar comeleons, which people can have as a pet if they're bred domestically, but you can't collect them from the wild, and if you look at the parasites that live inside them, you can tell pretty quickly if it's a parasite that only exists in the wild.
In Madagascar, you know, that chameleon couldn't possibly have been bread domestically, so it was adopted.
It wasn't, you know, a real.
Bread domestically bread comeleianon, because there's no way they could have picked up there was parasites anywhere else. So that that is one aspect for example. There's also another aspects where you get parasites that can control insects that damage crops, So that's another thing that you can potentially use parasites for.
I'm still locking there's that the forensic science of chamelion parasites is a good thing.
Chamelion, well, but our traveicking kindyt control it, yeah again, or you'll get really nasty parasites and you'll get parasites that aren't so nasty, So maybe the chameleon's like I don't like the parasite, but it's not completely messing up my life.
So okay, again, this was an early interview, and we're talking about chameleon parasites right now, which then led me down a rabbit hole reading a two thousand and seven news article about a guy from Croatia who vacationed in Thailand. He was caught in customs with a wriggling suitcase that authorities discovered was filled with one hundred and seventy five chamellions. So let's not do that humans. But one thing we can do is donate to a charity of the ologists choosing.
And this episode of so long ago, the benefit of your episode being on a shelf for three and a half years is now in honor of doctor Kuvrous, we're sending a donation to the Globalstas Mayuses Alliance, which is an alliance of partners working together to accelerate the progress toward Shistas Mayas's control and elimination. And you can find out more at Eliminateshisto dot org. That link is in the show notes. And that was made possible by sponsors of the show you may hear about now.
When it's time to consider a new car, it's time to take a leap, a leap forward with class eating speck and cutting edge technology without compromise. More choice, more space, more styles, more for you, like the all new B ten with premium comfort and seamless connectivity built for every road from your daily commute to weekend adventures. So what are you waiting for? Take the leap leap motor, A leap forward?
Mom?
Why did they call it Scottish cheese?
It's cottage cheese, honey. And I'm not sure.
Did dogs in other countries speak different languages? Yeah?
I think so.
When when we.
Get there, well, we've got to fix the car first.
But there's someone coming to help us.
Is it the man from Geneva?
Not Geneva, he's from a Viva. Oh there's a van now.
For car insurance with breakdown rescue, it takes a Viva visit Aviva Doda E to say fifteen percent acceptance criteria terms and conditions apply. Minimum premium of three hundred and ten year old. Fifteen percent discant applies to new policies BottomLine see Aviva dot E for details. Car insurance is underwritten by Aviva Insurance Ireland DAK Aviva Direct Arland Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Okay, back to the blood flukes. Let's learn about the asses of the hour, Bill Harzia And no, there are not patreon questions because at the time I did not know what I was doing. And if you don't believe me, you just wait to see how this episode ends.
Okay.
Another thing that happens to these parasites, particularly things like worms, intestinal worms or blood flukes, they are incredible at manipulating the host immune system, so they will find ways to dampen the host response so that the host's immune system doesn't attack them, and that can have a secondary effect in that you won't get allergic reactions quite so strong.
So they have been linked like worms have been linked to potentially dampening down the effect of like iritobal syndrome, chrons, disease, asthma and exima. Yeah, that kind of autoimmune stuff. So there does seem to be like a link between where you've got a lot of parasitic worms, you have less of these allergies, but areas where like here, where you
don't have any of these worms. A lot more people are suffering from autoimmune seeds, and people are doing a lot of research looking at what it is exactly in the parasite worm that is dampening down this immune system, and is there a way of making it into a safe medicine for people to take.
You could know.
I would not advise people to go and infect themselves with worms. There are the risk of getting complications. Even if it's just one, one can be quite severe, particularly also for pregnancy. It can be quite dangerous as well. So yeah, I wouldn't say I go and infect yourself with worms. I know that there are people who will do that.
Yeah, there were tapeworms were used as a deity.
And like, yeah, exactly that as well.
I remember seeing an all add from the.
Twenties where take one of these tapeworms and then the takeworms just gobble of your for you.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, do you hear stories.
I actually know a girl who had some dadsusually and ended up with like a legit tapeworm. Do people come to you because they know they're like, oh, we're going to have a choose deals with parasites.
I don't I think I have had that once or twice ages ago, email saying like, oh my god, I think I have this parasite.
What should I do.
We're not allowed. We're not medic doctors. We're not allowed to, you know, tell them all you should go and take this. It's not we're not trained that way. We'll give advice about. Okay, there's the you know, the London Hospital of Tropical Medicine. Go there, tell them where you've been and they'll treat you. And they have a walk in clinic for people who just come back from traveling. But you do get cases as well, where it will be a museum staff member.
And we've actually got a specimen from a museum staff member who got infected with the worm.
Please tell me everything.
Well, and after he took the treatment and like pooped it out, he cleaned it, he cleaned it and brought it in and we've got it preserved in some.
Alcohol to work with it.
I mean, that's very generous.
Yeah, to know, that's like.
Straight out of your buddy.
Yeah, it's nicer, nice collection.
There.
Have you gotten to do any field work at all?
Yeah?
I do for my previous job at the museum, So I was a postdoctoral researcher on a particular project on Schistoston's.
But for that.
Project, which I did for five years, I traveled every year to a sub Saharan African country, Tanzania.
To do field work.
And before and for my PhD as well, I traveled to different African countries to do field work there, and that was definitely an attraction for me. In terms of parasitology as a discipline. You can if you're a field parasitologist like I am, you get to travel to lots
of different countries and experience different cultures. But also whilst you're doing that, you get to help with a particular health problem in that in that country, and your research can feed into how that country and the Ministry of Health is dealing with that particular disease.
I like the application side.
How you can apply this parasite knowledge in the health area.
Remember last episode of Baby Zygotologies, I still haven't even asked about schistos smias is really, so let's actually get into it.
Give me a really brief rundown of just smyses and from what I understand.
And I learn this in seventh grade and that still haunted me still they were drills into the foot. What does this work? Yeah?
How does it? So?
Yeah, it's got a complicated life cycle. It's got a two host life cycle, right, So the human or the mammal is the main host where the male and female's pair up and they produce eggs. The eggs come out into the blood system, but then they pierce the barrier between the blood system and the urinary tract or the
intestinal tract, pending which species they are. The eggs come out with urine and steel when person goes to the bathroom, and in a lot of the areas where they're where just smices occur, there are no infrastructure for toilets and sewage and things like that, so people will definicate urinate outdoors and often will go and wash themselves in a river,
and that's how the eggs enter the river. And it's when they are in water that they will hatch out, and these larval stages or baby shift of zones will come out of the eggs and we'll start swimming around in the water. And they are actually looking for a very specific snail species to infects, so very complicated. You've got this snail species when when they find them, they go inside and they are able to multiply thousands of
times inside the snail. Then they'll come out of the snail, and when somebody goes to wash themselves or their clothes or their dishes in that water body, this next stage that comes out of the snail will locate them again using chemical cues, or locate the human and pierce the skin.
So it might be the foot, but it could be any other part of the body, and they have these they'll go down like a hair follicule, and then they have these all enzymes that they'll release which will break down the skin and they can just snip in into the blood system under the skin, and that's when they'll you know, travel around the body, getting bigger and bigger, and then finally pair up with their opposite sex and produce kids.
That's selfish, little assholes. Yeah, why the snail? Why this particular snail is the snail? Like, why am I involved?
Yeah?
Absolutely, poor snail as well a lot of control programs also look at controlling the snail, so the snail gets killed off in order to prevent the parasite.
Okay, so the schistosomes are boning in your blood vessels, and then the female blurbs out some eggs, which are called mirrorciitia, which sounds like a beachy town outside of San Diego. But those eggs get into snail tissue. The snail releases sircaria, which is a larval form that looks like an egg with a forked tail. It's kind of like a tiny swimming iud. But while they're still looking for a snail, those little baby eggs are watching the clock, just scrambling.
These larval stages.
They can't feed, so they don't survive very long in the water, maybe twenty four hours, and they get weaker and weaker, so they'll start getting desperate towards the end, and they'll try to infect anything, any snail species.
But once they do that.
They won't be able to overcome that other snail species immune system, so they won't they'll die inside the snail, whereas in this particular species they have evolved to adapt to that immune system and they can overrun it basically and just get away with using the snail as a big sex party.
Well not quite. It's clonal. It's not sex. It's not correct pairings.
You got breakups, spooning with your cousin someone get these worms a TLC show.
Oh my god.
So, okay, how do you do field work and not worry about these little.
Dudes getting infected?
Yeah?
Well, because I'm an expert in schistosomes, I know how to avoid getting infected with schistosomes. Other parasites is another matter, but with shist to zemes, at least I can avoid getting them. So what we do when we do field work, we do two types of field work. We do one where we collect the snail, and that's where we're most
likely to get infected. So collecting the snail involves going into the water body and we wear like you know, fishermen have these big, huge waders, So we wear these waders and depending how deep the water is, will either wear like wellies or waders that come up to your thighs or sometimes even chest waders. And you go in there with a like net, a special net, and you scoop around amongst all the vegetation and marshy habitat and
pull out the loads of different snails. And you've got to pick out the snails that you know are the ones that can't get infected. And then another type of fieldwork. Which is worse is that I go into schools and this is working with local research institutes or ministries of health, ministries of education. So I'll go into schools and I'll ask like one hundred kids to provide school samples or urinary samples, and then I'll filter out the eggs in those infected kids.
It's just quite grewesome work. It's not very glamorous. Do you have to keep the numbered or yeah, they.
All have to have IDs. I shouldn't have access that. All the kids' data is pretty protected. These IDs, we can link that to what's the parasite species that we collected from this child? And then here at the museum we do a lot of parasite DNA work, so we can link that parasite DNA to that infection from that area.
Wow.
And it's actually quite useful to because we work alongside treatment programs. Anywhere we go where we do our research, anybody who's infected will get treated. So any school we go to to collect from infected children, those kids will then get treated afterwards by either the National Control Program or by various NGOs that we work with that will.
Treat children too.
Yeah.
So at least I know those kids are being treated, which is great. The thing is that they'll go back in the water and get infected again. So something that we do is we monitor how the parasite might genetically might be changing with ongoing treatment programs.
Is you know I told you about this.
Evolutionary arms race, or one of the sort of selection pressures we're putting is that we're treating lots of people with this drug and it's our only drug, and the parasite might start resisting, getting resistance or being less sensitive to this drug, in which case we've got a massive problem. Because it's the only drug we have and it's currently being donated free. We don't want that drug to not work anymore. So you've really got to monitor what's going on.
How does it work as it is.
This is one of the embarrassing stories of research. Nobody knows. It was originally developed as a malaria treatment, but when they were testing it out, they say, it clearly doesn't stop malaria, but something's going on with schistosomiasis. So that's how they worked out that it does kill the schist of cell worms, but only the adult schist of cell worms, not the younger stages, and they think it's got something to do with the worms calcium channels that disrupts them
and then the worm just sort of withers away and dies. Wow, but it's an accident and they're still trying to work out the exact mechanism. Loads of people are spending years researching in this aspect.
And yeah, but that is still being investigated. And the drug has been given out for free by its maker Murk, which just crossed the one billion free tablets line, which has estimated to have treated four hundred million since two thousand and seven. But still two hundred thousand people every
year globally die from this parasite. But I was looking for recent news on it, and in the Journal of ethno Pharmacology last week there was an article citing the anti parasitic effects of red propolis, which is be spit mixed with their bees wax and tree resins. So do I need an ethno pharmacology episode, Yes, I do now, as we're talking about eggs and pooh and willowy white worms.
I just need you to know that I took a break to get a snack while researching this, and this week I was so on top of my snack game that I pre made some chia puddings, but I'm now sitting here eating some globby mush that contains a constellation of slimy chia seeds that look like eggs and also threads of shredded coconut that look like worms, and I need to tell you in context, it is not awesome. Okay, my sludge aside, back to research on therapies, which kind of has its own set of complications.
So you try to use maybe light hamsters. It doesn't work very well and isn't very nice as well, but there's no way of keeping that parasite life cycle without.
Having a host there.
So it makes researching these sort of things a lot harder to do, both from a financial point of view also regulation point of view as well.
Yeah, they're like, hey, do you want to sign up for this study we're going to give you?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
You're very difficult to get that through like ethical approval, all that kind of thing.
Like you get a gift card to Starbucks.
Yes, don't people like no.
Anook says that she's working on neglected tropical diseases, which, despite affecting one billion people annually, get very little funding and attention for all of the infuriating and heartbreaking reasons that you would suspect quite a lot.
Of the time, because the people they infect tend to be poor and in poor communities, and also because they're not immediate killers like malaria is, for example, for children, that can kill kids pretty quickly, whereas in things like schistosomes that it builds up gradually and it just means that person is sick for a very long time and that will affect their physical growth but also their cognitive ability, and it will then impact on their economic ability, and
eventually it will lead to being quite a causing quite a restraint on health systems that are already pretty weak in these poor communities. So it's like a gradual thing that happens with these neglected tropical diseases. But they're not like they're not sexy. That's the problem. They're not really sexy as a topic, So that's why they're called neglected.
What kind of impact do you think your particular work has.
Had so they're different who it's a good question. There's sort of a different streams of impact that our research can have.
So one of them is that all.
The research we do, the child gets treated or the person gets treated afterwards, So that's one impact, and that's great, and it could be that in those areas they wouldn't get treated, So that's one impact. An impact of the actual research that we do is that we're able to inform local governments and local ministries of health of what snail species they're dealing with, where that snail is predominantly found,
and how best they could potentially control the snail. Whilst we train local researchers on this parasite how to identify this parasite and how to study it.
They also store wild collected specimens for further research, like to see if a vaccine will work on it. And I was like, wait, thesets are alive, and no, they're not alive. They are very dead. But having dead ones on hand, or rather I guess in the vials is helpful because what.
You can do is because a lot of these things are tested out on laboratory strains, and laboratory strains do not reflect the diversity of the parasite in the field. So you'll develop this great vaccine based on a particular part of the DNA of this parasite. Lab strain parasite. Yeah, this is great, This is going to work, and then you'll test it out on the field and it doesn't work at all because that part of the DNA doesn't is only a small fraction of population that's actually out there.
So you can actually use these collections of the museum to look at how diverse field specimens are and get a better indication, a better idea of how effective your vaccine's going to be, if at all. As well as looking at the museum does a lot on evolution and looking at how parasites adapt to changing environments.
For example, that's all done.
With DNA work, and that's that they think about parasites is that they do adapt.
Yeah, very very good at adapting. It's scary actually.
Okay, And here's a whopper of a question I asked three years before a global pandemic.
Are you kind of a germophobe at all?
Because of your work?
Are you less of a germophobe?
I think I'm less of a germophobe. I know, I wouldn't say I'm less of a germophobe. I take precautions, so I get vaccinated.
I love vaccinations. I have all of them.
Yeah, they're available, I'll get it, but and I'll definitely be careful in terms of, you know, wearing gloves and wearing wellies and protecting myself. But I have a bit more of a like, well, you know, on the train, are you Likena?
Like?
Are you are you more or less likely to hold onto a rail?
On the two?
O'll hold on to a rail. I'll just wash my hands on or before I touch my eyes, for example.
Such simple times when you could just gab face to face with a worm expert and also just leave your house.
There are times when I've gotten sick.
Everybody that does field it will get the stomach bug, gets on stage or another, and it's not fun. Ast travelers get it. I think I've had malaria as well, which wasn't a good experience. Do not recommend it. Definitely get lots of insect repellent.
Did you have fever hallucinations? Yeah, yes, it was so. I was.
I was doing my PhD and I had I was working in Kenya, and I remember the field work was really intense and we take preventative anti malarials to prevent us from getting malaria. But I think what happened was that the field work was so intense. I forgot to take the pill and if you forget it, you are not covered particularly well that day.
It's got a very short half life.
And I remember that I was bitten by a lot of mosquitoes as well, because I didn't have time to reapply and sex repellent, you know.
So, but I didn't think about it.
I thought, oh, I've beat to Africa lots of times, but I've got It'll be fine. And then when I came, I came back to the UK, I stayed for a week, and then I went to West Africa to Niger, and the day I arrived, I started feeling quite feverish. I thought, oh, I got the flu. So annoying, I've got the field work.
It started getting progressively worse. I then had to let the teams go out to the school and I stayed behind in this you see, in this building that used to be a hospital, but the money had stopped, so it was just an empty building that was nearer the villages where we were, and we were in the middle
of nowhere. So I stayed behind there and kind of like slipped on the ground and hallucinated a bit and had just felt so weak I wasn't quite aware, but the teams were getting really worried about me, and we I think we left the site early, but I.
Already started feeling better, so I.
Thought, oh, it must have been one of those you know bugs that I got, and I'm sure it's all going to be fine now. And the teams were thinking it looks like particularly this team leaders, it looks like malaria. But she's only just come from the UK. She can't possibly have had malaria. And I, of course didn't tell her that I was in Kenya weeks before. She eventually because I started feeling better, which is a cycle. Malaria
happens in cycles. You hallucinate and get the fever, then you're a bit better, and then you get it even worse. I was better for a while and said, no, I'm fine, let's continue, went to the next place in the middle of nowhere, and suddenly started getting worse but really bad, and I couldn't really get up. That's when she this lady asked me are we in Africa recently?
And I was like, oh, She told her, yeah, I was in Kenya without totally wearing insect repellent or taking all of the anti malarials.
Why she gave.
Me a look like I am going to kill you.
Yeah, pretty much. And malaria has a two week.
Period for it to develop in your body before you show symptoms, so she immediately they took a blood smear from me and looked under the microscope and apparently it was full of malaria parasites.
And they were too scared.
They were scared I was going to freak out, so they didn't tell me, and they and I was hallucinating anywhere what I was out of it, so I wouldn't have really known.
Very weird ones just mixed up.
But I couldn't quite I wasn't sure when it was day and when it was night, and then I'd think that I'd got up and done something, but in fact I hadn't.
Just that kind of stuff.
I'm just still lying down and I thought I'd got up and I don't know, got a drink of water, but in fact I.
Hadn't moved, you know, that kind of thing.
She put me immediately on treatment and just told me, you know, just take these cus.
I just took the pills.
And I started getting better, and that's when they told me, you have malaria.
And apparently I went, oh, cool, are you serious?
Because I knew that once you diagnosed it, you're out of the danger zone. And it's also that thing of knowing what you have, when you know that it's not.
Going to kill you, you really relieved. Yeah, not cool. I think I said it in French tho, because I was in.
Wow, Oh my god. So you asked to save the blood smear.
Oh no, I didn't. I wish I had, but I didn't.
And we were in a hospital out in the middle of nowhere, and they didn't really have a lot of facilities, so I think they probably just you know, cleaned the slide.
Yeah, how do.
You do that where you have a microscope and you're like, we might as well just look in here and see some.
Of my like, my own stuff. No, I think that was probably the only time really I did that. She effectively saved my life.
And that is where my batteries died. So we continue talking for another twenty minutes without me realizing that my batteries had just croaked mid conversation. So this is where our episode concludes, just with a lesson to travel across continents and oceans for answers asking smart people simple questions and also learn how to use your sound equipment before doing so. But also I want you to know the lesson here. No failure is as bad as you think
it is. I mean, here we are. I thought this episode would never ever be heard, but.
Here we are.
I decided, you know what, let's.
Just share this nugget of vintage ologies. I have plenty of episodes banked, but just having this one on this shelf has been gnawing at me for too long. So you can follow intrepid Bill Harzologist doctor Anook guvris on Twitter at say Anook and find more links to her work at aliward dot com, slash ologies slash Bill Harzology. Yes there is a link that in the show notes, and we are at ologies on Instagram and Twitter. I am at Ali Ward on Instagram and Twitter, so please
do say hello there. If you listen to the end of the episode to last week's secret, there is more info on that secret on my Instagram. I'm at Ali Ward, so do say hi. Merch is available at aliward dot com. Thank you Shannon Felts and Bonnie Dutch of the Comedy podcast You are that for managing that. Thank you Aaron Talbert for admitting the big, huge group of listeners on the Ologies podcast Facebook page. Thank you to every single patron at patreon dot com slash Ologies for making the
show possible. Thank you Emily White and all the transcribers for making transcripts available. Caleb Patten bleeps them and transcripts and bleeped versions are on the website for free. The link is in the show notes. Thank you to Noel Dilworth for doing so much scheduling and various life saving and of course to assistant editor and chief executive cheerleader Jared Sleeper, who has taken up quarantine workouts every morning at nine am Pacific on Twitch, so you can find
him via my Instagram and just sweat along. Occasionally I do walk by with a coffee and a doc. And of course to the grooviest worm in the tube, Steven Ray Morris for helping us patch this together each week. And the theme song is by Nick Thorburn and if you like it, you should check out his band Islands. They're a good band. He also did the theme song for Cereal, which is nuts right Cereal with an ass
not a sea. Now, if you stick around to the end of the episode you Know I tell you a secret, and this week it is a life hack from old dad word. I realized this this week and I'm too excited about it. But if your shower is vexed by soapscum, it is very gratifying to clean it with the edge of razor blade. You just glide the razor edge across it and all the gross stuff just peels off and curls.
And if you're like wow, I actually have never had a lazy month or two where I ate a lot of spiced cakes and bald watching Christmas movies and watched government buildings being breached, so I don't have soaps gum. I'm really happy for you about that. And I will actually take your life hacks if you want to give them to me. Okay, be safe out there. Remember chin up masks on.
We got this.
Bye bye pacodermatology, homeology, cryptozoology, lithology and technology, meteorology, a typology, seriology, philology.
I got worms.
H