Food Poisoning Parasite Can Evade Drugs
 (Washington, Reuters Health, 3/25/04)

Mitchell Abrahamsen and colleagues at the University of Minnesota have mapped the DNA of the cryptosporidium parvum (c. parvum), a parasite that can induce severe, even fatal, diarrhea in both humans and animals. C. parvum can evade conventional treatments because the organism lacks the biochemical structures that anti-parasite drugs typically target. This new genetic analysis of the organism, however, has revealed some genetic weak points--genes that are so unlike human DNA that drug developers may safely target them.