Scientists are looking to outer space for help in their attempt to prevent new outbreaks of the tropical disease schistosomiasis in southern China.

Liver fibrosis occurs in the setting of chronic injury caused by different etiologies constituting a serious worldwide public health problem. In addition to schistosomiasis, hepatopathies due to alcohol, viral hepatitis, drugs, metabolic and autoimmune diseases, and congenital abnormalities are important causes of liver fibrosis.

In 2000 the World Health Organization (WHO) stopped recommending metrifonate for treating urinary schistosomiasis because the drug did not appear to be as effective as the treatment of choice, praziquantel. Now a systematic review published in the latest edition of The Cochrane Library indicates that both metrifonate and praziquantel are effective at treating the infection.

A new genetic analysis, published March 19th in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, suggests that the parasitic worm Schistosoma mekongi is more widespread than previously thought.

A research team supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has identified chemical compounds that hold promise as potential therapies for schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease that afflicts more than 200 million people worldwide. The findings were reported today in the advance online publication of the journal Nature Medicine.

Public health researchers at Brown University have found that the health burden of an Asian strain of schistosomiasis is much more debilitating than previously thought.

Dr Charlotte Gower, from the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, has been awarded the 2007 Replacement, Refinement and Reduction (3Rs) Prize. The prize, from the National Centre for the 3Rs, is for Dr Gower's work looking into the parasites that cause schistosomiasis.

A parasitic infection common in China and Southeast Asia could be effectively reduced by controlling snail populations, according to research published in PLoS Medicine.

Although it has been speculated for more than a century that the slave trade was responsible for bringing many tropical diseases to the Americas, only recently has convincing evidence shown that lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis), schistosomiasis, and onchocerciasis (river blindness) originated in this way.

Researchers provide new details about the inner workings of a parasitic worm that causes a tropical disease called schistosomiasis, which leads to itchy skin, fever, chills, muscle aches, and liver disease that, in some cases, can be fatal.

Small changes in agricultural and sanitation practices may eliminate the spread of a disease that affects some 200 million people living in developing nations around the world. Researchers working in remote farming villages in western China report that providing medicine to infected people and animals, along with modifying irrigation and waste treatment practices could reduce, or even eliminate, the long-term transmission of schistosomiasis.