Seventeen humans have volunteered to host parasitic worms in their bodies for 12 weeks. It is hoped that the study will lead to a life-saving vaccine for one of the most devastating diseases in the world.

The Netherland-based study is centered around finding a cure for schistosomiasis, (also known as snail fever), a type of parasitic flatworm that enters the body through the skin and can cause devastating effects like kidney failure, bladder cancer and infertility.

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The parasitic disease affects hundreds of millions of people around the world and kills thousands every year. Infected children in sub-Saharan Africa and South America, where the condition is particularly common, have also had their physical growth and learning ability impacted, reports Futurism.

The Netherland-based study is the first step in finding a vaccination that could prevent infection. Researchers must show the vaccine works in order to raise the millions of dollars needed to set up a study in actual affected areas. And so, 17 healthy young adult participants, each being paid $1,200 for their involvement, volunteered to have 20 male larvae injected into their system as a quick and easy way to test the vaccination.

The larvae can’t reproduce and at the end of the 12-week study infectious disease physicians at the Leiden University Medical Center will flush the infection and kill any remaining parasites with Praziquantel.

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Participants have so far only reported mild rash and minor fever symptoms and, as the New York Times reports, a Dutch ethics board signed off on the study, so the risk is not thought to be great. However, Daniel Colley, a schistosomiasis researcher, told Science Magazine he doesn’t believe the Praziquantel treatment is “terribly effective,” as the worms can live in your system for five to 10 years.

“That is a long time to have something as ugly as a schistosome living in your blood vessels, putting out excrement and things,” Colley warned.