Prof. examines prevalent disease
February 10, 2009 by BRIAN CREECH For The RedBlack
Filed under News
Daniel Colley has a lot of decorative snails, nearly 70 by his estimation. Crystal, wood, ceramic and clay, they are an artistic reminder of an animal that is an intricate part of Colley’s vocation.
“You have to dance with the one that brought you,” said Colley, a professor of microbiology and director of Center for Tropical and Emerging Diseases, whose current research focuses on how better to control the spread of schistosomiasis.
“When people learn you work with snails, you have a tendency to start collecting these things.”
Snails, specifically freshwater snails, serve as incubators for the parasite schistosomiasis, which Colley has been studying since completing his post-doc in Brazil in 1970. Snails act as an intermediate host where the larvae feed and mature into another larval state, which leaves the snail and seeks out a human host. If not for snails, then the schistosomiasis larvae would die before maturing into a state that can infect humans.
Colley will speak about schistosomiasis tonight at 5 p.m. in the Chapel as part of the “Voices form the Vanguard” lecture series.
Humans catch the disease by swimming in or drinking schisto-infested water. Upon entering the human body, the parasite matures and feasts upon our nutrients and red blood cells.
Nearly 200 million people have the disease worldwide, according to the Center for Emerging and Tropical Diseases. It is one of the most prevalent worm infections in the world, causing anemia and contributing to general poverty among people with the disease.
Colley has traveled to Brazil, St. Lucia, Egypt and Kenya to see how the disease interacts with the human immune system. In Kenya, where visits to Lake Victoria are part of the daily routine, exposure to the disease is common. Colley has spent the last 14 years traveling to Kenya, tracking the disease as it interacts with the human immune system.
“It is difficult to say that I have helped a lot of people,” Colley said. “The immunology hasn’t really helped anyone yet, but I have trained a lot of people in how to treat schisto. We are still trying to figure how the worm does what it does in the human body.”
Studying the parasite and its interaction with the human immune system can lead to advances in understanding how other autoimmune diseases work, Colley said.
Living in a highly globalized world, everything that happens in third world villages has the potential to affect life in the U.S., Colley said.
“The real problem is not immunology, it is sanitation and water,” Colley said. “If we ever solve this problem it is going to be through sanitation. So many different problems can be solved by cleaner water.”
