As President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Director of its product development partnership (PDP) Hotez leads an international team of scientists working to develop vaccines to combat hookworm infection, schistosomiasis, and other infectious and neglected diseases, including Chagas disease, leishmaniasis, and SARS.
While working at the Department of Agriculture, he identified a new species of hookworm called Necator americanus.
Remembered for his extensive research of Ancylostoma duodenale (hookworm), in 1880 he determined that hookworm was the cause of anemia being suffered by workmen building the St. Gotthard railway tunnel.
Support for current research efforts to develop hookworm vaccines has come from the Schistosomiasis Vaccine Initiative, a program of the Sabin Vaccine Institute in collaboration with George Washington University, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, the Chinese Institute of Parasitic Diseases, the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The authors also argue that feral cats act as vectors for diseases that can impact domestic cats, wildlife and humans, examples include feline leukemia virus, feline immunodeficiency virus, fleas and ear mites (which are also carried by canines and wildlife), hookworms, roundworms, Bartonella, Rickettsia, Coxiella and Toxoplasma gondii, and that fecal matter has also been shown to degrade water quality.
Whipworm commonly infects patients also infected with Giardia, Entamoeba histolytica, Ascaris lumbricoides, and hookworms.