Allergy treatment with parasitic worms?

[camdenflick]

Has anyone, ANYONE, heard of this? I feel like I may have made it up (consultant allergist's never heard of it, staff at the Anaphylaxis Campaign never heard of it, not many references on the internet). I'm sure I read an article or saw a program about this - a man with severe allergies, interested in why some populations around the word do not suffer, hypothesised it may have been their infection with a certain kind of parasitic worm that regulates the abnormal immune response involved in allergy, infected himself and his allergies ceased while he was infected. Did I dream this stuff up? Seems a bit of a leap, as I normally dream about Leonardo DiCaprio bringing me Lindt...

No you didn't make it up. I saw a programme on it a few years back which involved this man i think.

David Pritchard

"Helminthic therapy is an experimental approach to the treatment of asthma, allergies and inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, which involves the administration of controlled quantities of selected, benign intestinal parasites such as hookworm and whipworm.

The treatment developed out of understanding gained from scientific studies which showed that, while these illnesses have escalated in developed countries during the past 50-100 years, they remain much less common in parts of the world where intestinal parasites are still prevalent.

The aim of the treatment is to rebalance the host's immune system by replacing one or more of the harmless organisms which have been lost in recent decades due to improved hygiene, sanitation and lifestyle changes"

Lots more info can be found at
www.foodsmatter.com

Hello

this was also featured on bang goes the theory where one of the presenters took some worms over a period of time to help with his dust allergy. i think it was dust anyway. i think it did help but i can't remember the detail.

Im interested in this too. my dd has multiple food allergies plus pollen and cat.

hth

Yes, I too saw this on Bang goes the Theory. I didn't pay much attention at the time, as it all seemed a bit 'woo' (like homeopathy and all the other non-substantiated "we are all too westernised" kinds of approaches).

Could this work? I would gladly infect my DS with almost anything if I thought it would help 'cure' his allergies...

Anybody properly 'scientific' out there in our allergy community?

e.g. bruffin?
Thumbwitch? - do you know about this?

hmmm, have read about this and saw Bang! prog,

Then I had a long and hard think, imo, this basically just proves that the allergies are linked to foods or at least digestions track. The way it works is that basically the pig worm (and probiotics to some extent) digest stuff that we can't (tho we are encouraged to eat them by clever marketing/advertising).

Pig worm would happily live on well, pig food, wouldn't it? So when we eat food that is not meant for us then we need help to digest it. AFter all we know that we can't digest fibre, but we are still sold weetabix et al.

Funny that many people who change the diet to exclude wheat / gluten and dairy and their derivatives seem to be healthier and for many even asthma subsides.. So these helminths basically break down what we can't to make it available for us to process further. Both gluten and dairy can cause IG reactions or intolerances that build up over time.

It might even be that probiotics are added to dairy to make it more digestible.. I think it's awful that we are made to believe that eg bran is healthy, it's not. Same goes for corn and soya, where I grew up corn is regarded as animal feed.

Having removed wheat (gluten) from my ds diet a few years ago (and mine to emphatise) I am blown away by what amazing difference it has made.

not a scientist but there is a (full-text) review here of helminth (worm) parasites and allergic diseases. The picture is complicated - some parasitic worms seem to protect against allergic disease while others might promote it. The IgE antibody response in humans apparently evolved as a parasite defence, and immunologists suspect the parasites have evolved ways of switching off this response, which could explain why infected people have fewer allergic symptoms. So, according to the hygiene hypothesis, in our relatively recent cleaner environments in developed countries, where infections like whipworm or hookworms are rare, our evolved parasite-fighting immune response is now leading to high rates of allergies and asthma. However, like everything to do with allergy, parasites/hygiene hypothesis are very probably not the whole story as other influences like diet, rising rates of obesity, air pollution, low levels of vitamin D etc are all being linked to these disorders.