The inverse correlation between parasitic infections and autoimmune disease is interesting and is explored in Parasitic worms and inflammatory diseases, P. Zaccone et. al. [1].
In parts of the world, for example USA, Canada, Australia, Europe, other locations, serious parasitic infection are now not common. The immune system, which co-evolved with parasites over millions of years appears to turn on our own bodies because of the lack of parasites to attack. This hypothesis (the hygiene hypothesis) is investigated in the cited paper.
I referred to serious parasitic infections above because virtually everyone host some benign parasites such as the Demodex mite, a microscopic mite that lives on our eye lashes. See [2].
Finally, let me recommend Parasite Rex... by Carl Zimmer. [3]
Entirely anecdotal, I believe the immune system is already working at high capacity to stop you from becoming sick from the dozens of fungi, bacteria and viruses you come across on a daily basis.
The biggest metric I have for this is that when I am genuinely sick - with a cold or fever - it seems my body stops keeping things like HPV at bay and I start to see remnants of things like warts I haven’t seen for years start to pop up again - and of course disappear again along with the fever.
There are numerous accounts on the internet of medical tourists trekking to Southeast Asia or Mexico to acquire helminths or similar parasitical organisms reputed to calm down the body's immune response. Specifically, sufferers of Crohn's Disease have reported relief from symptoms after taking in (via a cut in the skin, or walking barefoot in feces, or drinking contaminated water) a few helminths.[1]
Too many helminths seems to have deleterious effects, however, so there seems to be a balance that must be struck.
There is evidence that these worms affect the microbial mixture in the gut.[2]
Generally speaking, modern humans live in sterile conditions whereas we have ferocious immune systems which evolved to handle filthy conditions. The theory is, given too little work to do, some people's immune systems start to attack the self.
Anecdotally, I have an incredibly healthy daughter; we never hesitated to expose her to as many strangers as possible. "Would you like to hold our baby?" She also got mother's milk for several years (advantage of being an only child). Almost never gets sick and when she does, it's for less than 24 hours. Hopefully it stays that way :)
> modern humans live in sterile conditions whereas we have ferocious immune systems which evolved to handle filthy conditions.
Day care centres are what their immune system is designed to fight.
I’m not sure how old your daughter is, but I have never been sicker than the few years my child attended one. I work in a hospital and my wife is a teacher, so it’s not like we weren’t exposed to bugs.
No matter how clean the child care centre, kids are a Petrie dish of horrible diseases.
As I understand it, our immune systems are pretty busy even under today's sanitary conditions. We're constantly fighting off bacterial and viral invaders, 24x7. But, I guess we're just not as busy as we could be.
The modern western inland diet contains a lot of wheat and other grains which have more omega-6 than omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. PUFAs are used in the synthesis of immune factors (interleukins, cytokines, ...) and this imbalance in the omega-3:omega-6 ratio causes more aggressive versions of those immune factors to be produced.
Then there’s sugar, processed food, work stress, particle emissions, microbes in indoor air... there are plenty of reasons for our immune system to attack itself.
So I keep reading reports about how hookworms are like a super cure for autoimmune disorders from allergies to Crohn's disease. Does anyone know why we can't just inject, ingest, or apply whatever it is that they emit? Like...why is there not a treatment for eczema yet better than steroid creams?
A) it's extremely time-consuming and difficult to capture the mechanism for how organisms act in the middle of the human body in the middle of their lifecycle when we're not even sure what we're looking for, so it's just not been found yet.
B) it might just be safe and cost-effective enough to give people worms temporarily as a treatment instead for now. (I don't know if this is the case, but if they're doing it for a study, the risk profile can't be that bad...)
C) even if we isolate whatever mechanism they have (and can synthesize it readily), it's still an immune modulator, so all the same caveats for steroid creams might apply at any significant dose.
> even if we isolate whatever mechanism they have (and can synthesize it readily), it's still an immune modulator, so all the same caveats for steroid creams might apply at any significant dose.
Sure, but it wouldn't be an infection you could spread to other people. It also wouldn't be an infection that could grow, of its own accord, to undesirable levels within you. That's a huge improvement.
Helminthic therapy is a real thing for people with severe autoimmune issues. There are folks in the US right now walking around with relatively mild hookworm infections and substantially fewer autoimmune symptoms :)
Apparently you can buy "pig whipworm" (Trichuris suis) eggs and ingest them. It seems they can't survive for long in your gut (so there's no danger of an infestation), but it's long enough to trigger whatever cure / autoimmune reset it is that you're looking for.
This is just anecdotal (I know someone who did this and says that it worked) -- but please do your own research and consult a healthcare professional!!!
If gp lives in a developed country and hasn’t traveled anywhere that hookworms are prevalent, then no - the probability they have hookworms is very low.
I've tried it for celiac, but it didn't work for me. There's a whole underground economy of shipping people hookworms. They claim that about 80% of people with some form of auto-immune disease get benefit. I'm glad to see that there's more research being done in this area.
Strange the study might have used a placebo group of people infected with parasites. I guess they needed to test if their process actually was effective in generating hookworm infections?
They were testing a vaccine to prevent hookworm infection. [0] After giving the experimental vaccine, they intentionally inoculated the research subjects with hookworms to measure whether the vaccine prevented hookworm infection.
Readit News
In parts of the world, for example USA, Canada, Australia, Europe, other locations, serious parasitic infection are now not common. The immune system, which co-evolved with parasites over millions of years appears to turn on our own bodies because of the lack of parasites to attack. This hypothesis (the hygiene hypothesis) is investigated in the cited paper.
I referred to serious parasitic infections above because virtually everyone host some benign parasites such as the Demodex mite, a microscopic mite that lives on our eye lashes. See [2].
Finally, let me recommend Parasite Rex... by Carl Zimmer. [3]
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1618732/
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3884930/
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Rex-Bizarre-Dangerous-Creatu...
The biggest metric I have for this is that when I am genuinely sick - with a cold or fever - it seems my body stops keeping things like HPV at bay and I start to see remnants of things like warts I haven’t seen for years start to pop up again - and of course disappear again along with the fever.
By that hypothesis, willingly introducing some (preferably benign) parasite or infection would keep it busy so it doesn't attack itself?
Just thinking out in text here, I'm tired heh
Edit: Oh, it’s already happening: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25961202
Too many helminths seems to have deleterious effects, however, so there seems to be a balance that must be struck.
There is evidence that these worms affect the microbial mixture in the gut.[2]
Generally speaking, modern humans live in sterile conditions whereas we have ferocious immune systems which evolved to handle filthy conditions. The theory is, given too little work to do, some people's immune systems start to attack the self.
Anecdotally, I have an incredibly healthy daughter; we never hesitated to expose her to as many strangers as possible. "Would you like to hold our baby?" She also got mother's milk for several years (advantage of being an only child). Almost never gets sick and when she does, it's for less than 24 hours. Hopefully it stays that way :)
1. https://www.healthline.com/health/crohns-disease/hook-worms#...
2. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/parasitic-worms-may-...
Day care centres are what their immune system is designed to fight. I’m not sure how old your daughter is, but I have never been sicker than the few years my child attended one. I work in a hospital and my wife is a teacher, so it’s not like we weren’t exposed to bugs.
No matter how clean the child care centre, kids are a Petrie dish of horrible diseases.
Then there’s sugar, processed food, work stress, particle emissions, microbes in indoor air... there are plenty of reasons for our immune system to attack itself.
A) it's extremely time-consuming and difficult to capture the mechanism for how organisms act in the middle of the human body in the middle of their lifecycle when we're not even sure what we're looking for, so it's just not been found yet.
B) it might just be safe and cost-effective enough to give people worms temporarily as a treatment instead for now. (I don't know if this is the case, but if they're doing it for a study, the risk profile can't be that bad...)
C) even if we isolate whatever mechanism they have (and can synthesize it readily), it's still an immune modulator, so all the same caveats for steroid creams might apply at any significant dose.
Sure, but it wouldn't be an infection you could spread to other people. It also wouldn't be an infection that could grow, of its own accord, to undesirable levels within you. That's a huge improvement.
Helminthic therapy is a real thing for people with severe autoimmune issues. There are folks in the US right now walking around with relatively mild hookworm infections and substantially fewer autoimmune symptoms :)
That said, Coronado Biosciences ran a pork hookworm clinical trial in the treatment of inflammatory bowel syndrome and it failed. More work needed.
This is just anecdotal (I know someone who did this and says that it worked) -- but please do your own research and consult a healthcare professional!!!
I remember pooping a really long worm some years ago, and taking a anti-worm medicine...
Deleted Comment
Exquisite election, nothing like a Lernaeolophus to appreciate our fine mammalian lifestyle. Nasty Necator, otherwise... yuck.
[0] https://twitter.com/JimmyBernot/status/1354443850153144321