Ridding the gut of the ulcer-causing bacterium Helicobacter pylori could prevent stomach cancer in people with a family history of the disease. H. pylori infects more than half of all people, and has been linked to peptic ulcers and gastric cancer, which kills more people worldwide than all but two other cancers.

A man has had a 12cm-long flesh-eating tapeworm removed from his head which had been slowly eating his brain for the past 15 years. Wang Lei first started to feel numbness down his left side in 2007, and has continued to suffer with fail health ever since.

At an open-air hospital in northern Ghana, Donald Hopkins watched a small girl endure a medical ordeal unseen in the United States. It was 2007, and four-year-old Rafia Fusseini was getting treated for Guinea worm, a parasite that infected her after she drank contaminated water and then grew inside her body. Now it was burrowing out through her skin. Rafia sat on a chair, dressed in a blue-and-red print blouse...

Scratch another Guinea worm hot spot off the list. One of the countries hardest hit with the parasite — South Sudan — has finally stopped transmission, the Carter Center announced Wednesday. The country reported zero cases in 2017 and hasn't had a case in 15 months. There are also no signs Guinea worm is circulating in dogs in South Sudan, as it is in Chad and Mali.

Some fish parasites are on the rise, bringing with them risks to human health and fisheries-based economies. Now researchers have a new way to track their numbers—by digging into old records and museum samples. Recent years have seen alarming outbreaks of disease in fish and other marine species, including one that caused a massive die-off of sea stars in the northeast Pacific starting in 2013. But it has not been clear whether this uptick in illnesses was due to an actual increase in the number of pathogens...

A mind-controlling parasite found in cat feces may give people the courage they need to become entrepreneurs, researchers reported Tuesday. They found that people who have been infected with the Toxoplasma gondii parasite are more likely to major in business and to have started their own businesses than non-infected people. The parasite, which makes rodents unafraid of cats, may be reducing the fear of failure in people, Stefanie Johnson of the University of Colorado and colleagues said.

Parasites have a leisurely lifestyle — set up camp at someone else’s place, live off their food, profit (evolutionarily speaking). But new research shows that sometimes the parasite gets a taste of its own medicine, and from an unexpected source. Scientists studying wasps that target oak leaves found that a second parasite, a vine, can get its tendrils into the homes set up by the wasps, called galls, subverting their diversion of the host’s resources. After that, things don’t go so well for the wasp.

A US woman has become the first person ever infected with a rare, tiny eye worm previously only found in cattle, according to a Centres for Disease Control (CDC) report. Abby Beckley, a 26-year-old from Oregon, felt an itching sensation in her eye for more than a week before she pulled a half-inch (1.27 cm) long worm out of her own eyeball, researchers said.

Windsor couple Eddie Zytner and Katie Stephens are regretting a recent trip to the Caribbean — but so would anybody who came home with parasites burrowing in their feet. Windsor couple Eddie Zytner and Katie Stephens can’t help but regret a recent trip to the Caribbean — but so would anybody who came home with parasites burrowing in their feet. “I have dozens of worms in my feet, and so does Katie,” said Zytner, 25, on Friday. “It’s kind of sickening to think about.”

From nigiri to temaki, sushi has boomed in popularity in the west, but now doctors are warning of a less appetising trend: a rise in parasitic infections. A team of doctors from Portugal raised concerns after a 32-year old man was admitted to hospital complaining of pain in his abdomen just below his ribs, vomiting and had a slight fever, all of which had lasted for a week.

There are a group of parasites extremely disgusting and mean. Humanity declared war on them.