Friday, November 21, 2014

Researchers take the Genome Sequence of a Tape Worm Found in a Man's Head. Helps Fight Future Worm Infections.

           A UK man had a tape worm removed from his brain after four years of stumping doctors. The doctors originally ran tests for Cancer, HIV and many other diseases and they all came back as negative. The only representation of anything being wrong with this man is that he had inflammation in his brain, and the PET scans were showing that the inflammation was actually moving. After four years, the doctors decided to operate, to their shock, they ended up pulling out a very rare tape worm. The tape worm is called Spirometra erinaceiuropaei and it lived off absorbing the brains fatty tissue. The man has recovered and is now fine.
Scan of the tape worm moving in the patients head. 

         After the doctors removed the tape worm scientists stepped in and decided to take the genome sequence to fight future infections. The lead researcher Dr. Hayley Bennett made many discoveries. One of the more interesting is that the genome is much larger then what would be suspected "It's 1.26 billion base pairs long" which is about as large as the human genome. This tape worm also had a larger sequence then most tape worms. More importantly, after sequencing the genome the research has found that the tapeworm is resistant to a drug called albendazole, a "widely used anti-tapeworm drug." Knowing this information can help researchers pinpoint a new drug that targets the tape worm and others like it more efficiently. Other researchers have also been working on the sequencing of parasites to help out the medical community. 
          I found this research to be very interesting. First, because a man had a tape worm in his head for 4 years, living and moving as it pleased! Secondly, and more importantly is because it shows how using a genome sequence can help researchers find the proper drugs to fight diseases and other infectious bodies. 
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1 comment:

  1. Interesting, but mostly just gross! I can't imagine dealing with that for four years, then learning it was a tape worm! However, it seems like something doctors should be able to combat and be aware of for future cases. It is interesting that the genome of this specific tape worm was larger than anticipated.

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