• Question: can you get parasites that eat flesh in Northern Ireland

    Asked by jf4567 to Tim, Enda, Jean, Kate, Kev on 17 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by megantully.
    • Photo: Tim Downing

      Tim Downing answered on 17 Nov 2012:

      Hi JF4567,

      Probably! I study single-celled leishmania parasites. These are found in tropical regions like India and parts of African and Brazil. 12 million people globally are infection. But they are also found in similar hot places, like the Mediterranean, eg France and Spain. This means when people travel there, they sometimes bring parasites (and other foreign bugs!) with them.

      There was a study of over 1,000 people in Austria – a country like this is similar to Ireland because it has no natural leishmania. The authors (Poeppl & co) looked for chemical signatures of infections (antibodies) linked to parasites similar to leishmania, and found 2% showed some evidence of having previously been infected. Then they search specifically for DNA linked to leishmania and found 0.4% of people had this – so at least 4 here. So we can guess that there are probably these flesh-eating parasites in Northern Ireland.

      Leishmania are present in other animals too, they frequently dogs and cows globally. Shockingly, they might also be in cats too. One study found 4% of Spanish cats had leishmania. So the chances are they are present in Ireland and other countries … but of course we would have to test this to be certain.

      Tim

    • Photo: Jean Bourke

      Jean Bourke answered on 23 Nov 2012:

      You can get something very nasty called necrotizing fasciitis. It is a rare infection and eats the deep layers of your skin. It looks horrible and is very very painful.
      It progresses really quickly and you are more likely to get it (and many other things) if you immunocompromised. Cancer and diabetes can play a role too. It is treated with antibiotics. There about 500 new cases a year in the UK. Many different types of bacteria can cause it and they do not technically eat the flesh but rather release loads of toxins that kill it. You may have heard of some of the bacteria that can cause it:
      streptococcus and Staphylococcus aureus. How a bacterial infection progresses depends on what part of the body they infect, in this case it would need to be a deep skin infection and that is hard to get.

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