Using parasites to cure allergies

[UrbanDad]

Did anyone else see this article about using hookworm as a treatment for asthma, ceoliac disease, diabetes, MS and arthritis?

It is pretty well understood that a healthy intestine needs the right bacteria, but who would have thought a healthy immune system might need worms?

There is research going on in Nottingham about hookworms and allergic and autoimmune disease, with a view to developing a safe treatment as hookworm infection can be nasty. Link here - research.nottingham.ac.uk/Vision/display.aspx?id=1177&pid=213

I've read that the 'allergy' antibody, IgE, is elevated in people with parasite infections and that it may have evolved to promote parasite expulsion from the gut but in more affluent societies where helminth infections are rare, there is more IgE related immune dysregulation. I think the research emphasis is in trying to develop therapies which don't carry the risk of serious parasite infection.

Fascinating stuff. The only thing which slightly bugs me about this (if you'll pardon the pun) is that all medical research seems to be aimed at producing more palliative medicine (the so-called "drugs from bugs").

I just wish for once medical research would come back and say "OK, we need to adjust lifestyle to deal with this chronic disease" or "let's try to do this in a way which does not require the production of a patentable and expensive drug which people have to take every day". Personally, I hate my allergies and if someone asked me to (a) take a hookworm and cure it, or (b) take yet more medicine every day, I'm with the worm...

This is pharmaceutical research though - hence the interest in "drugs from bugs" - it is carried out in a pharmacy department. Understandable bias therefore.

I agree, incredibly interesting stuff though.

yes seen it before. Unfortunately hookworm infestation is not entirely beneficial (see quote from one site below) and in particular may damage the brain. So maybe those with allergies are actually smarter than average!

Health warning "In susceptible children hookworms cause intellectual, cognitive and growth retardation, intrauterine growth retardation, prematurity, and low birth weight among newborns born to infected mothers.

Hookworm infection is rarely fatal, but anemia can be significant in the heavily infected individual."

Nottingham team has recently published initial results - rather mixed: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20030661
Infection with small numbers of larvae didn't result in much meaningful change, suggests undertaking trial more closely mimicking natural infection (which would be more risky, possibly?)

Although this group have been working in this area for a very long time and have an international reputation in this field, it is still research which is a long way from being clinically useful in the near future.

They have been doing some interesting stuff though linking dust-mites to allergies and showing that eczema plus dust-mites can increase the risk of allergies.