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Infection
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The event of an infection with filaria parasites is an almost unobservable
event, at least experimentally inaccessible, and thus, not well described.
The human host can potentially be infected with thousands of L3 per year,
but only a few will establish successfully and finally develop into an adult parasite.
What makes the infection event to be an infectious one?
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The parasite burden in human hosts develops only slowly during the first
years of life. It seems that children are better protected against infection
than adults. Or is this just coincidence? It could also be true that the
first successful parasite increases the host's susceptibility for
superinfections - the first one invites the others?
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An explanation for a parasite burden which only slowly develops over
the host's age could originate from an immunosuppression induced by the
parasite. Actually, defense mechanisms of the host are highly efficient,
but the parasite might be capable of weakening it.
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The parasite's ability to infect and persist in the host becomes obvious
when looking at different transmission potentials: the rate at which
parasites establish per year in the human host can achieve high values
already at low transmission potentials. Surprisingly, it does not increase
considerably when the transmission potential becomes really high.
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