Giving Compass' Take:

• Diana Duong explains how neglected tropical diseases and nutrition are interrelated, causing a dangerous cycle of ill health. 

• How can research better illuminate the relationship between neglected tropical diseases and nutrition and ways to prevent and end the dangerous cycle? 

• Learn how to find and fund scientific research. 

From blindness and agonizing pain to critically damaging internal organs and disfiguring limbs, the ways in which neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) can wreak havoc on the human body are seemingly endless.

But one of the most detrimental ways that NTDs attack the body may actually be invisible.

The relationship between NTDs and nutrition is, quite literally, a competition. Parasites and bacterial diseases live in the same space, taking over the host — in this case, a human body — and compete for their nutrients from food.

As the body works to fight off disease — by increasing its metabolic rate, while decreasing its appetite and immune responses — it also ends up depleting nutrients and energy faster. The body’s ability to take in nutrients is reduced, as internal tissue is damaged. Nearly all roads lead to undernutrition, which ends up making a person even more susceptible to disease. It's a lose-lose situation.

Marginalized communities suffer from chronic undernutrition already — 1 in 5 children in developing countries is underweight. NTDs only serve to exacerbate risks of malnourishment. Some NTDs, like intestinal worms and schistosomiasis (a parasitic worm), infect more than 1 billion people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Both of these NTDs cause anemia and malnutrition, which can put expectant mothers and children at risk.

Which comes first? Did the undernourishment cause the infection, or did the infection cause the undernourishment?

Researchers are still unclear because subjecting participants to either undernutrition or infection for the extent of a study is highly unethical. For now, prospective studies can only show that there is an existing negative relationship between NTDs and nutrition — it just can’t be said which causes the other.

Read the full article about neglected tropical diseases and nutrition by Diana Duong at Global Citizen.