News by Subject Biology

According to a UN-agreement, assistance dogs like guide dogs, signal dogs and medical response dogs are welcome in hospitals and other public places. However, in practice, they are regularly refused entry. Hygiene reasons are often given as the main argument for this. Research by Utrecht University now shows that the paws of assistance dogs are cleaner than the shoe soles of their users, and thus, paw hygiene is no reason to ban assistance dogs from hospitals.

Malaria is the deadliest pathogen in human history, and by studying the strains of malaria that birds carry, scientists might be able to help prevent the disease in humans. Researchers analyzed blood samples of more than 1,000 species of birds from the Andes looking for malaria; they found that the strains of malaria present in a local area don't always neatly align with the types of birds living there.

Parasitic flatworms known as agents of food-borne zoonoses were confirmed to use several species of thiarid snails, commonly found in freshwater and brackish environments in southeast Asia, as their first intermediate host. These parasites can cause severe ocular infections in humans who consume raw or improperly cooked fish that have fed on parasitised snails. The study, conducted in South Thailand, is published in the peer-reviewed open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.

According to Childs' team's study, while a mosquito ingests the parasite in a "blood meal" by biting an infected person, it typically takes about 10 to 14 days -- known as the "extrinsic incubation period" or EIP -- until the parasites appear in the mosquito's salivary glands where it can then be transmitted to another human.

This study, published recently in the international journal Insects, was conducted by researchers from the University of Granada, the Doñana Biological Station, and the Biomedical Research Networking Centre for Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBERESP)