Pesticides speed the spread of deadly waterborne pathogens

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-07/uoc--pst071720.php


News Release 17-Jul-2020
University of California - Berkeley


Widespread use of pesticides and other agrochemicals can speed the transmission of the debilitating disease schistosomiasis, while also upsetting the ecological balances in aquatic environments that prevent infections, finds a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

Schistosomiasis, also known as snail fever, is caused by parasitic worms that develop and multiply inside freshwater snails and is transmitted through contact with contaminated water. The infection, which can trigger lifelong liver and kidney damage, affects hundreds of millions of people every year and is second only to malaria among parasitic diseases, in terms of its global impact on human health.

The study, published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health, found that agrochemicals can increase the transmission of the schistosome worm in myriad ways: by directly affecting the survival of the waterborne parasite itself, by decimating aquatic predators that feed on the snails that carry the parasite and by altering the composition of algae in the water, which provides a major food source for snails.

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