ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2008
Ecological rules governing helminth-microparasite coinfection.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 182 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
182 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 406 citations in OpenAlex.
- The extent, nature, and pathogenic consequences of helminth polyparasitism in humans: A meta-analysis.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2019Pooled it
- Intersecting threats:International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2026Article
- Coinfections Dampen the Effects of Temperature on Host-Parasite Interactions.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- Playing it safe at early life stages: Balancing energy allocations to maximize fitness under seasonal pathogen dynamics.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- In vivo reduction of Treg expansion in rodent helminth-malaria coinfection.Parasites & vectors · 2026Article
- Counterproductive: coinfection of a water flea by a fungus and a microsporidium reduces the reproductive outputs of all parties.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Coevolution of host resistance and pathogen exploitation in a propagule-mediated infection model.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Review
- Scoop That Poop: Optimising Faecal Sample Pre-Processing for Parasite Metabarcoding.Molecular ecology resources · 2026Article
- Article
- Experimental evolution of Plasmodium yoelii in single and helminth-coinfected mice.Malaria journal · 2025Article
- Investigating within-host population diversity of Cryptosporidium parvum using BlooMine.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Parasite responses to resource provisioning can be altered by within-host co-infection interactions.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Effects of host sex, age and behaviour on co-infection patterns in a wild ungulate.Parasitology · 2025Article
- Resources Modulate Developmental Shifts but Not Infection Tolerance Upon Co-Infection in an Insect System.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Efficiency of anthelmintic treatment and its effect on microparasite dynamics in wildInternational journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2025Article
- Individual host factors and co-infections affect the probability and excretion intensity of endoparasite infections in dairy cows.Parasites & vectors · 2025Article
- Role of individual and population heterogeneity in shaping dynamics of multi-pathogen shedding in an island endemic bat.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- On the Cause and Consequences of Coinfection: A General Mechanistic Framework of Within-Host Parasite Competition.Ecology letters · 2025Review
- Effect of Rare, Locally Isolated Entomopathogenic Fungi on the Survival ofMicroorganisms · 2025Article
122 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Coinfection of a host by multiple parasite species has important epidemiological and clinical implications. However, the direction and magnitude of effects vary considerably among systems, and, until now, there has been no general framework within which to explain this variation. Community ecology has great potential for application to such problems in biomedicine. Here, metaanalysis of data from 54 experiments on laboratory mice reveals that basic ecological rules govern the outcome of coinfection across a broad spectrum of parasite taxa. Specifically, resource-based ("bottom-up") and predator-based ("top-down") control mechanisms combined to determine microparasite population size in helminth-coinfected hosts. Coinfection imposed bottom-up control (resulting in decreased microparasite density) when a helminth that causes anemia was paired with a microparasite species that requires host red blood cells. At the same time, coinfection impaired top-down control of microparasites by the immune system: the greater the helminth-induced suppression of the inflammatory cytokine interferon (IFN)-gamma, the greater the increase in microparasite density. These results suggest that microparasite population growth will be most explosive when underlying helminths do not impose resource limitations but do strongly modulate IFN-gamma responses. Surprisingly simple rules and an ecological framework within which to analyze biomedical data thus emerge from analysis of this dataset. Through such an interdisciplinary lens, predicting the outcome of coinfection may become tractable.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.