health

Where the wild (*and infected) things are

science

Read our OA manuscript in Molecular Ecology Resources

Parasites are tricky animals in their own right. We forget that sometimes– thinking of parasites as a symptom or a consequence of something rather than as their own entity. Macroparasites, the tapeworms and cestodes and flukes of the world– they are animals. And they have wild ways of living their lives.

During my postdoctoral work, I fell headfirst into the world of parasites. The parasites we have been working on are a fascinating tapeworm called Schistocephalus solidus which must be consumed by three different animals in order to reach adulthood. Isn’t that insane? They begin in the wilds of lake sediment as eggs. They must be consumed by a zooplankton (copepod), which then must be consumed by a fish. That fish is eaten by a bird. Only then—inside a warm-blooded avian gut—can the parasite finally reach sexual maturity and reproduce. It’s less “circle of life” and more “gauntlet of digestion”.

Everyone knows tapeworms. Tapeworms have wrecked havoc on the world. They affect our dogs and cats, our cattle and sheep, and can be absolutely debilitating for humans. The thing is. . . we know a lot about tapeworms once they are big. But how tapeworms start their lives is kind of a mystery. How do they get from an egg floating in a lake to the body of that first host? This early chapter is surprisingly mysterious.

This paper is all about generating that first insight. What is the infection intensity in first-intermediate hosts in wild populations?

To answer that, we turned to a powerhouse molecular tool: droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). Imagine regular PCR, but supersized—replicated 20,000 times in parallel. It’s incredibly sensitive, able to detect the faintest traces of parasite DNA in a single, transparent zooplankton drifting through the water column. It’s a first and important step to systematically quantify infection dynamics in first-intermediate hosts. It took a lot of troubleshooting, a lot of learning, and more than a few “why won’t this work” moments. But in the end, we developed a set of primers and probes that can detect early-stage helminths, not just in S. solidus, but n a range of tapeworms and flukes.

If you’re interested in cryptic infections, trophic transmission, or just love a good parasitic mystery, this paper is for you. Take a peek and maybe you too can be a space-traveling Indiana Jones, following parasites through space and time. Oh my!

Stay tuned for really sexy papers about infection dynamics in first-intermediate hosts across time. I am cooking with gas now, friends.

Reddit and Breast Reduction

Uncategorized

There are many places that we get our information, and in 2024, it’s hard not to ask Dr. Google just about everything that is going wrong (or right?) with us. Honestly, the spiral is a rite-of-passage into navigating the internet. But something that was new to me (yes, yes, I live under a massive rock) are forums. Enter: Reddit.

Essentially, a lot of people can come together and contribute information that is linked around a common thread. Having an operation? Well, suddenly you have access to the experiences, suggestions, and interactions between thousands of people. Life is daunting, surgery is scary, and suddenly there are hundreds of people that have gone through the exact same thing, contributing their lived experience! What a rush!

While this lived experience is something to cherish, it is important that these threads exist in a vast sea of data. If your searches and keywords are biased, you will bias the responses that are filtered to address your question. I had lots of questions, and found lots of answers! Most of them opposing each other! Gah! In this frustration, I tried to compile all of the “answers” across threads grouped within a forum (i.e. r/Reduction, “swelling”) to get a grasp on the structure of the data.

I went through r/Reduction threads to compile answers to my most pressing questions I had before surgery.

Operation techniques

A hot take on drains

TL;DR Drain usage is more about the surgeon than about you.

Now this was really interesting to plot out. I was able to get more than 100 answers, and the proportion of who got drains and who didn’t was almost exactly 50/50! The people who had drains weren’t having more tissue removed, didn’t seem to fit a specific demographic, and didn’t appear to come from a specific region. Surgery outcomes seem to be great for those with and without it. All in all, it really just seems like something that is surgeon specific. Of those that did get drains, average time was about 5 days.

Post-op recovery

Peak Swelling

TL;DR Your brain is ready to go, but your body is not.

These data look left-skewed, where we see more swelling sooner after operation. I was surprised that these data were not MORE skewed– the mean peak swelling is at 1MPO! I think that this may relate to patients getting back to work, or becoming too active too early? Potentially eliciting inflammatory responses of still healing tissues.

Post-op recovery

True Size

TL;DR It’s gonna take many months before you know.

These data are suuuuuper spread out! See how the peaks aren’t are dramatic in the green graph compared to the pink one? It means that everyone’s experiences are much more varied. Here, the mean actually sits around 4 months post-op, which is earlier than the 6-month number we just kind of patch on. 

How to read "raincloud" plots. The "mountain" is the spread of the data-- the higher the peak, the more points occur around that given value. This is echoed in the coloured band under the distribution: here, the white point indicates the group mean and the coloured slabs are credible intervals. The darker the colour indicates that we are more statistically certain that a point should occur in that given range. The little points are the raw data I scrubbed from the forums! (forae?)

Access (and contribute to!) the code– I have everything up on GitHub. On the second page of the excel are some of the threads I used, although I admittedly got a bit lazy doing this so it’s not the most scientifically rigorous documentation. (In my defense I am 6DPO rn). Please just credit me where it is appropriate.

Check out the live post on Reddit yourself 😉