Blocking the LDs of the SjIRs, resulted in a significant decrease in glucose levels, and this can help explain previous work on S. mansoni showing that host environmental changes caused by malnutrition or by streptozotocin-induced diabetes affected the worm's ability to produce viable eggs [71], [72], which further supports our conclusion that insulin may play an important role in fecundity of female schistosmes. Here, INS is linked to nutritional deficiency disease.