justChris wrote:
Some of the statements regarding bilharzia by Team Sky cannot be true.
http://velonews.competitor.com/...rzia-parasite_295548 My wife works as a post-doc studying infectious diseases, primarily researching schistosomiasis - which is the more common, scientific name for bilharzia.
The treatment for schistosomiasis/bilharzia is biltricide (Praziquantel) as mentioned, but the treatment is a one-day treatment. Reference here:
http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/...75b1916b8#nlm34068-7 under dosage and adminsitration.
If schistosomasis/bilharzia was diagnosed in 2010, Froome should have been given the one day treatment and it should have no longer been an issue. The only reported occurrences of when the initial treatment does not eradicate the infection is when a heavy worm burden is in the system (i.e. a lot of worms infected Froome.) Even in those cases, treatment does not drag on for 18 months+. A heavy worm burden would also make the symptoms more severe than "I was always getting little colds and coughs, nothing serious".
Thus, it's unlikely to claim that it's still in his system (as of January according to the above article), unless he got re-infected by continuing to come into contact with contaminated waters. Given his reported history with this infection, that would be stupid.
There are other inconsistencies with the claims given:
"It’s not something that just disappears. It’s a parasite. It lays eggs. They might be dormant, then the eggs hatch, then they lay more eggs" - Completely false: Eggs laid in humans do not, and cannot hatch; they can only hatch in fresh water (after being excreted by humans). They also need interaction with snails before the hatched eggs can infect humans again. Source: Under Pathophysiology/Life Cycle -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schistosomiasis, also fairly common knowledge for those familiar with the infection.
Biltricide "basically kills everything in your system" - also false, same link above about the treatment under Adverse Effects - "In general BILTRICIDE is very well tolerated. Side effects are usually mild and transient and do not require treatment." Thus, a week of not being able to ride his bike is a ridiculous statement.
I'm not sure why they would lie to / misinform us about something like this....
Does your wife also work with top-level athletes who push themselves to the limits of what their body can handle in training? If not, do you think she would agree that it's possible that training that hard could cause them to experience more severe side-effects or complications than normal? And/or that such a finely tuned athlete would have a very different definition of what qualifies as an "adverse effect" to a normal person?
They're genuine questions, I know nothing about the disease than what can be found on the internet, and there's a lot of things out there like "the disease can
normally be treated..." which don't really give much clue as to what complications or "non-normal" cases can look like.
