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A Retrospective on Drinking Water
Published in Rhoda G.M. Wang, Water Contamination and Health, 2020
It is evident from the water purification attempts throughout history that humans realized that drinking water could be unsafe. As mentioned, however, Dr. John Snow was the first to demonstrate a causal link between drinking water and a disease (cholera). Several other infectious diseases may be transmitted by contaminated water. Bacterial diseases include typhoid fever, campylobacteriosis, salmonellosis, and shigellosis, in addition to cholera; hepatitis A, Norwalk virus, and rotavirus gastroenteritis are examples of water-transmitted viral diseases. Parasitic diseases, such as amebiasis and giardiasis, are also transmitted via water (25).
In silico Identification of Drug and Vaccine Targets Against Human, Animal, and Plant Pathogens
Published in Jean F. Challacombe, Metabolic Pathway Engineering, 2021
Human parasites that cause neglected tropical diseases include protozoa and various worms [2], infecting more than one billion of the world’s poorest people (https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/ntd/diseases/index.html). This group of pathogens includes Giardia duodenalis, Entamoeba histolytica, and Trichomonas vaginalis [76]. Neglected diseases caused by protozoa include malaria, trypanosomiasis, and leishmaniasis [77], while parasitic worms that cause human disease include helminths (Enterobius, Ascaris, Necator, Ancylostoma, Trichuris, and Strongyloides), tapeworms (Taenia solium, Taenia saginata, and Hymenolepis nana), and the trematodes (especially Schistosoma, Clonorchis, Fasciola, and Fasciolopsis) [2, 78]. While there are effective drugs for the treatment of parasitic diseases [76, 79], many of them were developed 20 or more years ago [4, 77] and their clinical usefulness may be limited due to poor efficacy, toxicity, and the increasing incidence of drug resistance [2, 77, 80–85], especially in animals (https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/safety-health/new-antiparasitic-drugs-needed-sheep-and-goats). New drug discovery protocols for parasitic diseases have included testing combinations of existing drugs, repurposing existing drugs, improving known drugs and compound classes [2, 4, 77, 80, 84, 86, 87], and expressing anti-parasitic targets in yeast to speed up the screening process [82]. Prodrugs, which are administered in an inactive form and rely on metabolic activation to become active, have also been pursued to circumvent pharmacokinetic challenges in treating parasitic diseases [2, 86–88]. In spite of the ongoing efforts, there are still challenges in developing new anti-parasite therapeutics [2, 77, 83, 89–91].
Safe Drinking Water
Published in Joseph A. Cotruvo, Gunther F. Craun, Nancy Hearne, Providing Safe Drinking Water in Small Systems, 2019
Infectious and parasitic diseases are major causes of death worldwide. For developing countries they are a particularly heavy burden: almost 50% of deaths of children under the age of five are related to infectious diseases. The problem, of course, is that the amount of potable, fresh water is actually a very small percentage - less than 10 % - of the water on the planet. Of that, the bulk is in frozen form, namely, glaciers, etc. Thus, we are dealing with a very small portion of the amount of water that is on this planet.
Evaluating the impacts of dredging and saline water intrusion on rural livelihoods in the Volta Estuary
Published in International Journal of River Basin Management, 2018
Gifty Nyekodzi, Elaine T. Lawson, Chris Gordon
According to the World Health Organization (WHO)1 schistosomiasis (bilharzia) is the second most prevalent and socio-economically devastating parasitic disease in tropical countries, after malaria. It is endemic to 74 countries in Africa, South America, and Asia, where approximately 200 million people are infected and up to 800 million people are at risk to become infected (Zhou et al. 2008). The disease is perceived to be most common among children of school going age in poor rural communities with poor sanitary conditions and unsafe water supply (Gryseels et al. 2006 cited in Zhou et al. 2008, Yirenya-Tawiah et al. 2011b). There are two forms of schistosomiasis, urinary and intestinal schistosomiasis (Gordon and Amatekpor 1999, Yirenya-Tawiah et al. 2011a). Urinary schistosomiasis caused by Schistosoma haematobium damages the bladder and kidneys, causing painful urination, blood in the urine, and abdominal pain. The other type, intestinal schistosomiasis is caused by Schistosoma mansoni and damages the intestines and liver, resulting in abdominal pain, fever and rectal bleeding. Schistosomiasis is caused by a parasite called a schistosome, which is a trematode worm with a complex life cycle (Zhou et al. 2008). The prevalence of schistosomiasis in the Volta Estuary was largely been attributed to the construction of the Akosombo and Kpong dams (Onori et al. 1963, McCullough and Ali 1965, Gordon 2006, Aboagye and Edoh 2009, Nkegbe 2010, Yirenya-Tawiah et al. 2011b).