Stomach Bug Research on a Bug’s Stomach by Diego Asencio

Hello again, it’s me Diego Asencio from TRIP back again with another blog. We are entering our third week of TRIP here at Temple University, and it has been some of the most enjoyable days of the week for me in the lab. In the last blog, I barely had an idea about what I wanted my individual project to be about, I was just worrying about the homework that I had yet to do. But I recently began the individual project after many hours of brainstorming and preparation.

Eosinophilic Esophagitis is a condition that I was diagnosed with a few years back. I had a hard time eating certain foods, felt nauseous, and felt like I had a pseudo-heartburn. Over the course of my diagnosis, I learned many new ideas about the body and especially the medicine that I take to help me not feel like my chest is on fire, Omeprazole. A proton pump inhibitor, Omeprazole, inhibits my stomach from creating acid, which reduces the pain that I feel. I feel amazing on the drug, but there hasn’t been any long term studies on omeprazole itself, other than a study about proton-pump inhibitors that say there is a chance that the medicine decreases bone density over time, and as athlete that it was one of the last things I want to happen to my body. So, I chose to study how Omeprazole affects fly larvae throughout their life, and also to see if an increase in dosage has any change to the flies' health as well.

Enough about the science, going to TRIP is something that I look forward to every week! Being independent is something that I have always enjoyed growing up, but now I am truly experiencing how to be an independent person. I drive myself to the train station where I hope I get off at the right stop, I get my own lunch, find my way home, all without any help from anybody. I really can’t describe what a pleasure it is to get out of the little suburbia that I live in and come to the city to experience more than what is around my street corner.