A parasite that infects humans who are over the age of 25
I want to know if the disease I invented is logical or just a total fiction.
A parasite (parasitic fungus) lives within the human brain. It infects other humans by releasing spores while invoking states of rage within their hosts. This makes it easier to infect other humans as it's similar to a "zombie" virus, if you will, though they're not dead. (I know there isn't any parasitic fungus which can infect humans, but let's say a new species was found or created in this story.)
The peculiarity of this parasite is that it can only infect people who are over 25 years (or thereabouts). Why? Because the brains of the people who are under 25 (on average) haven't reached the fourth age, so the parasite isn't viable. The frontal lobe in particular is the important factor, because to be viable for the parasite it needs to be fully developed.
There are five brain ages:
- 1st age: during pregnancy. The first neurons are formed from the 28th day of pregnancy in the embryo.
- 2nd age: from birth to 12 years.
- 3rd age: from 12 to 25 years old. (The regions in the frontal lobe are getting fully developed in the mid twenties.)
- 4th age: from 25 to 65 years old.
- 5th age: from 65 years old to ...
Oh, and if a vaccine could be found, in what way will it be the most effective?
So, do you think this parasite is possible or completely unrealistic? If you have any suggestions or ideas to make it more realistic, I'll gladly read them.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/134982. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
The parasite lies dorment in wisdom teeth.
Wisdom teeth usually emerge sometime between the ages of 17 and 25. They have that name because their emergence generally coincides with maturation, with adulthood.
Wisdom teeth are unique because there is only one set of them. For all the other teeth, there are baby teeth (which fall out between the ages of 4 and 13, depending on the placement of the teeth and with some individual variation) and permanent teeth. None of the other teeth work for the parasites because the baby teeth fall out too soon and the permanent teeth are buried under the baby teeth for the first few years.
Most people are infected as children but the parasite doesn't cause any symptoms when in the dental pulp. It is not until the wisdom teeth emerge that the parasite is mature and able to migrate to the brain (up the back of the throat to the nasal cavity then, with some burrowing, it finally reaches the brain).
There is no vaccine, but early removal of wisdom teeth (still inside the gums) is a pretty good preventative.
Is this scenario realistic? No, not particularly. But it has the right timeline and might help you sell your storyline. I hope it is useful to you.
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