Schistosomiasis haematobia

Schistosoma haematobium
Eggs of S. haematobium surrounded by intense infiltrates of eosinophils in bladder tissue.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Platyhelminthes
Class:	Trematoda
Order:	Diplostomida
Family:	Schistosomatidae
Genus:	Schistosoma
Species:	S. haematobium
Binomial name
Schistosoma haematobium (Bilharz, 1852)

Schistosoma haematobium (urinary blood fluke) is species of digenetic trematode, belonging to a group (genus) of blood flukes (Schistosoma). It is found in Africa and the Middle East. It is the major agent of schistosomiasis, the most prevalent parasitic infection in humans. It is the only blood fluke that infects the urinary tract, causing urinary schistosomiasis, and is the leading cause of bladder cancer (only next to tobacco smoking). The diseases are caused by the eggs.

Adults are found in the venous plexuses around the urinary bladder and the released eggs travels to the wall of the urine bladder causing haematuria and fibrosis of the bladder. The bladder becomes calcified, and there is increased pressure on ureters and kidneys otherwise known as hydronephrosis. Inflammation of the genitals due to S. haematobium may contribute to the propagation of HIV.

S. haematobium was the first blood fluke discovered. Theodor Bilharz, a German surgeon working in Cairo, identified the parasite as a causative agent of urinary infection in 1851. After the discoverer, the infection (generally including all schistosome infections) was called bilharzia or bilharziasis. Along with other helminth parasites Clonorchis sinensis and Opisthorchis viverrini, S. haematobium was declared as Group 1 (extensively proven) carcinogens by the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Working Group on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans in 2009.

Bloody urine (haematurea) was recorded by Ancient Egyptians in papyri 5,000 years ago. They called it Aaa. The first scientific report was by Marc Armand Ruffer, an English physician in Egypt, in 1910. He discovered parasite eggs from two mummies, which were dated to around 1,250–1,000 BCE. The oldest infection known to date was revealed using ELISA, which is more than 5,000 years old. In 1851, Theodor Maximillian Bilharz, a German physician at the Kasr el-Aini Hospital in Cairo recovered the adult fluke from a dead soldier. He named it Distomum haematobium, for its apparent two mouths (now called ventral and oral suckers) and habitat of the blood vessel. He published the formal description in 1852. The genus Distomum (literally "two-mouthed") was created by Carl Linnaeus in 1857 for all flukes; hence, it was not specific. Another German physician Heinrich Meckel von Hemsbach introduced a new name Bilharzia haematobium in 1856 to honour the discoverer. He also introduced the medical term bilharzia or bilharziasis to describe the infection. Unbeknown to von Hemsbach, a German zoologist David Friedrich Weinland established a new genus Schistosoma in 1858. After almost a century of taxonomic dispute, Schistosoma was validated by ICZN in 1954; thereby validating the name Schistosoma haematobium.

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