#roundworm

Santa Larvae 

Hurry down my cecum tonight!

i♡histo

A nematode larva (Contracaecum) in the digestive tract of a seal. The eggs of this parasitic nematode use fish as an intermediate host before infecting piscivorous mammals, including humans who may forget to clean their holiday salmon!

This festive image was captured by veterinary pathologist @velphegor_vetpath via Instagram.

Happy holidays everyone!

Here’s How A Disgusting Parasitic #WORM Can Actually Help You Get #PREGNANT
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A shocking new study in the journal #Science has found that a disgusting parasitic worm may actually increase fertility in #women.

After studying approximately 986 #Bolivian #women over the course of nine years, researchers discovered that those infected with the ascaris lumbricoides #roundworm gave #birth to about two more #children on average than those who were not.

In fact, the study found that the roundworm actually leads to “earlier first births and shortened inter birth intervals.”

As the #BBC reports, the researchers initially decided to conduct their study in #Bolivia solely because around 70 per cent of the country’s population has a parasitic infection.

While speaking with the BBC, one of the study’s lead researchers, Professor Aaron Blackwell, explained that this specific roundworm infection may work by “altering women’s immune systems, such that they become more or less #friendly towards a #pregnancy.”

Though it sounds pretty gross at first, Blackwell insists that the discovery has the potential to offer a huge positive impact on the way #fertility #drugs are created in the #future.

Because the research is still in its early stages, however, the study’s leaders cannot yet recommend that women actually try to become infected with this parasitic roundworm just to increase fertility.

Even more interesting, the study found that a #hookworm infection actually has the exact opposite effect on a #woman’s fertility of an ascaris lumbricoides roundworm.

Throughout the study, researchers noted that women infected with hookworm had “delayed first pregnancy and extended interbirth intervals,” leading to less #children in general.