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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Hookworms infect people mostly in countries where sanitation is poor and people often walk barefoot. In the United States, hookworm disease is found in impoverished areas. In one study site in Alabama, 34 percent of children recently were found to have hookworm eggs in their feces.(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Hookworms infect people mostly in countries where sanitation is poor and people often walk barefoot. In the United States, hookworm disease is found in impoverished areas. In one study site in Alabama, 34 percent of children recently were found to have hookworm eggs in their feces.
Working on a mouse model, a research team at the University of California, Riverside, has studied the secretion of the immune protein RELMalpha that is triggered in the body, following infection, to protect body tissue.
When the researchers knocked out, or turned off, RELMalpha, the mice produced super-killer macrophages — important cells of the immune system formed in response to an infection — that attached to the hookworm in far greater numbers. These macrophages, however, provoked increased tissue damage and inflammation.
Without RELMalpha, the immune system kills the hookworms more efficiently. But RELMalpha is needed, too, because it plays the important role of downregulating inflammation, thus ensuring the host survives.
“It’s a question of balance between immunity and inflammation,” says lead researcher Meera Nair, an expert on hookworm infections and assistant professor of biomedical sciences at UCR’s School of Medicine.
The research paper appears in next month’s issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology.
For more information, please visit: https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/54786