By blocking a protective enzyme in the microscopic parasite C. parvum, scientists have made it vulnerable to its host’s immune system.
In the developing world, Cryptosporidium parvum has long been the scourge of freshwater. A decade ago, it announced its presence in the United States, infecting over 400,000 people—the largest waterborne-disease outbreak in the county’s history.
Its rapid ability to spread, combined with an incredible resilience to water decontamination techniques, such as chlorination, led the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to add C. parvum to its list of public bioterrorism agents.
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