Researchers said a parasitic worm which affects millions of the world’s poorest people may hold an important but little-known key to cutting the spread of HIV.
Researchers said on Thursday ahead of a conference on the issue in London that Schistosomiasis affects at least 250 million people.
They said Schistosomiasis is caused by parasitic worms, picked up in infested waters, which drill through people’s skin and lay eggs in their bodies.
Experts in the tropical disease analysed that if the worms lay eggs in a woman’s genital areas, including the vagina and cervix, they can cause lesions which make women more vulnerable to HIV.
Studies carried out in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa and Mozambique have shown.
Marianne Comparet, Director of the London-based International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases (ISNTD), said study showed that women are three times more likely to be infected with HIV if they have female genital Schistosomiasis (FGS).
“It’s going completely under the radar, treating infected person could really impact on the other,”she said.
Comparet said men with the worms in their genitals show a sharp increase in the amount of HIV virus in their semen.
She said the treatment for Schistosomiasis is cheap and the drug has been donated for years to the World Health Organization (WHO), so this could be a relatively easy way to help cut the spread of HIV.