AG Specht

River blindness and Onchocerciasis are tropical diseases that are caused by helminth parasites. World Health Orgnization estimates 150 million people being infected. River blindness ist caused the filariae onchocerca volvulus. Offspring can migrate into the cornea of the eye, which causes inflammation and can lead to blindness.The filariae Wuchereria bancrofti is the cause of elephantiases. Infected people suffer from swelling of extremities and scroti due to disrutped flow of the lymphatic fluid. Despite ongoing elimination programmes, erradication has not been achieved. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new therapeutic strategies. Recent findings have suggested that depletion of endosymbiotic bacteria Wolbachia leads to death of adult worms. Studies using doxycycline have shown that a treatment regimen of 6 weeks is sufficient for depletion and adult worm death.

Imbedded in a research consortium funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, the two major objectives are to define shorter treatment regimens to be able to use it for mass drug administration as well as finding other drugs that can be administered to pregnant women or children, which is not the case for doxycycline.

Our group uses a murine model for filariasis (Litomosoides sigmodontis) to test the efficacy of drugs and drug combinations. On the other hand among nematodes, filarial parasites have the highest average lifespan in their host. Therefore, mechanisms have evolved that divert or down-regulate the host´s immune system in order to alow entry and spread of helminths in their victims, immunomodulation and suppression by filarial nematodes has been shown to spread to unrelated third party antigens. In many countries other diseases such as malaria are often coendemic. To dissect the relationship between two parasites residing in a host, we established a coninfection model with Litomosoides sigmodontis and Plasmodium berghei.