ArticlePLoS biology2010
Filarial parasites develop faster and reproduce earlier in response to host immune effectors that determine filarial life expectancy.
Article in PLoS biology, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers.
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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
51 citing papers in PubMed, 84 citations in OpenAlex.
- A basophil-specific GPCR mediates the immune response to helminth infection.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Master of Puppets: How Microbiota Drive the Nematoda Ecology and Evolution?Ecology and evolution · 2025Review
- Current perspectives in the epidemiology and control of lymphatic filariasis.Clinical microbiology reviews · 2025Review
- To live free or being a parasite: The optimal foraging behavior may favor the evolution of entomopathogenic nematodes.PloS one · 2024Article
- Eosinophil: An innate immune cell with anti-filarial vaccine and biomarker potential.Health science reports · 2023Article
- How to train your myeloid cells: a way forward for helminth vaccines?Frontiers in immunology · 2023Review
- Eosinophils in filarial infections: Inducers of protection or pathology?Frontiers in immunology · 2022Review
- Unbalanced Arginine pathway and altered maturation of pleural macrophages in Th2-deficient mice duringFrontiers in immunology · 2022Article
- Strongyloides stercoralis and HTLV-1 coinfection in CD34+ cord blood stem cell humanized mice: Alteration of cytokine responses and enhancement of larval growth.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2021Article
- Eosinophils and helminth infection: protective or pathogenic?Seminars in immunopathology · 2021Review
- Microfilaria-dependent thoracic pathology associated with eosinophilic and fibrotic polyps in filaria-infected rodents.Parasites & vectors · 2020Article
- Eosinophil-Mediated Immune Control of Adult Filarial Nematode Infection Can Proceed in the Absence of IL-4 Receptor Signaling.Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950) · 2020Article
- The immune response of inbred laboratory mice to Litomosoides sigmodontis: A route to discovery in myeloid cell biology.Parasite immunology · 2020Review
- Experimentally increased brood size accelerates actuarial senescence and increases subsequent reproductive effort in a wild bird population.The Journal of animal ecology · 2020Article
- Safety of Eosinophil-Depleting Therapy for Severe, Eosinophilic Asthma: Focus on Benralizumab.Drug safety · 2020Review
- Epigenetic and parasitological parameters are modulated in EBi3-/- mice infected with Schistosoma mansoni.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2020Article
- External disturbances impact helminth-host interactions by affecting dynamics of infection, parasite traits, and host immune responses.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Comparative analysis of small RNAs released by the filarial nematode Litomosoides sigmodontis in vitro and in vivo.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2019Article
- Susceptibility to L. sigmodontis infection is highest in animals lacking IL-4R/IL-5 compared to single knockouts of IL-4R, IL-5 or eosinophils.Parasites & vectors · 2019Article
- Adaptive phenotypic plasticity in malaria parasites is not constrained by previous responses to environmental change.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Humans and other mammals mount vigorous immune assaults against helminth parasites, yet there are intriguing reports that the immune response can enhance rather than impair parasite development. It has been hypothesized that helminths, like many free-living organisms, should optimize their development and reproduction in response to cues predicting future life expectancy. However, immune-dependent development by helminth parasites has so far eluded such evolutionary explanation. By manipulating various arms of the immune response of experimental hosts, we show that filarial nematodes, the parasites responsible for debilitating diseases in humans like river blindness and elephantiasis, accelerate their development in response to the IL-5 driven eosinophilia they encounter when infecting a host. Consequently they produce microfilariae, their transmission stages, earlier and in greater numbers. Eosinophilia is a primary host determinant of filarial life expectancy, operating both at larval and at late adult stages in anatomically and temporally separate locations, and is implicated in vaccine-mediated protection. Filarial nematodes are therefore able to adjust their reproductive schedules in response to an environmental predictor of their probability of survival, as proposed by evolutionary theory, thereby mitigating the effects of the immune attack to which helminths are most susceptible. Enhancing protective immunity against filarial nematodes, for example through vaccination, may be less effective at reducing transmission than would be expected and may, at worst, lead to increased transmission and, hence, pathology.
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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.