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Comment by middleclick | Hacker News Reader

Very interesting. Can someone comment if there is actual science behind it or the two cases the article gives can be explained by other non-scientific factors?

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Carl Zimmer's very interesting book Parasite Rex (though now over a decade and a half old) cites some studies on using worms to treat Crohn's disease and googling around yields this a more recent paper published in Science about studies done on mice [1].

[1] Layperson Summary - http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/parasitic-worms-may-p...

[2] Actual Article - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6285/608

It's plausible, but so far no clinical trials have been done AFAIK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy#Research

As someone else mentioned, Coronado Biosciences conducted a large, double-blinded study using pig whipworms for ulcerative colitis.

There was no difference between the treatment and placebo arms.

More info here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4374592/

It looks like it was for Crohn's.

What's most interesting is that the placebo was remarkably effective. That seems hard to believe and maybe it is a fluke.

Anyway the article said the study hasn't been published so maybe there are more details.

No that is actually a pretty typical placebo response for diarrhea or bowel movements. See my other comment here for specific details.

Well it's still the most interesting part to me. It's crazy that a medical condition as objective as diarrhea or stomach pain can be so heavily influenced by psychology.

Yes it is fascinating. It's well established that the stress system modulates bowel motility (via crh) and absorption (via cortisol).

Don't forget that's it's common for autoimmune diseases to wax and wane. Even if a patients get no therapy at all, the disease often gets better for a short period of time.

Also, stress affects autoimmunity [1], so it's possible that the placebo effect modulated the autoimmune disease itself.

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568997207...

"That seems hard to believe and maybe it is a fluke"

Pun intended?

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