Via the zany gang at the GetOutdoors blog, we heard the good news – that a vaccine for Giardia may be in the offing (though not right away).

For those unfamiliar with it, Giardia is a parasite that infects fly fishermen (as well as human beings) who drink contaminated water, and while the infection rate isn’t high, the parasite is often found in backcountry waters where livestock or pack animals hang out nearby.

I’ll spare you the graphic description of the somewhat debilitating symptoms (a few friends have endured it), though John Gierach once described it as “six weeks driving the porcelain bus.” Fun stuff.

From the New York Times:

Giardia infections can linger for months because the parasite plays a cunning defense against the body’s immune system. In its genomic wardrobe, it has 190 coats to choose from. As soon as the immune system has generated antibodies against one coat, giardia switches to another. Because of the parasite’s persistence and infectivity, some 280 million cases of giardiasis occur in the world each year, the World Health Organization estimates, though most of these are in developing countries where people are more inured to the disease.

Giardia’s offensive game could have a fatal weakness, however. Biologists led by Hugo D. Luján at the Catholic University of Córdoba in Argentina have gained a striking insight into its coat-shuffling stratagem.

With this knowledge, they have accomplished a cunning counterploy: they have forced the parasite to make and wear all its coat proteins at the same time. This altered parasite, they hope, should serve as the perfect vaccine, because it immunizes the body to the full repertoire of giardia’s coat proteins all at once. The idea has worked well in animal tests, Dr. Luján said.

That we might someday have Giardia on the run (Get it? On the “run”?) is good news indeed for those of us who wander around moving waters with our mouths hanging open, marveling at the impossible beauty.

After all, there’s nothing beautiful about the inside of a bathroom.

See you anywhere but the latrine, Tom Chandler.

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