Are Hookworms the Next Claritin?
blogs.discovermagazine.com
blogs.discovermagazine.com
http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/09/07/parasites/
People take dangerous steroids and/or extremely expensive biological treatments to knock down active immune systems. Worms seem like they have potential.
The basic reason why allergy suffers like me have such adverse reactions to common things such as pollen and cat dander is because the immune system over reacts.
From How Things Work:
As amazing as the immune system is, it sometimes makes mistakes. Allergies are the result of a hypersensitive immune system. The allergic immune system misidentifies an otherwise innocuous substance as harmful, and then attacks the substance with a ferocity far greater than required. The problems this attack can cause range from mildly inconvenient and uncomfortable to the total failure of the organism the immune system is supposed to be protecting.
So hookworms give the immune system something else to fight rather than allergens.
For that matter contracting AIDS would probably also limit or stop your allergies. (I'm not completely positive on that, just a theory.)
The Discover article is typical crap science writing, but if you've got a condition that puts you on the toilet with diarrhea four times a day, getting infected with some little worms can start to sound like an appealing alternative. To stop a little bout of hay fever? Not so much.
how about to stop uncontrollable sneezing, blocked sinuses, itchy streaming eyes for half the year?
Not that I'm rushing out to buy me some worms - but don't trivialise hay fever. It's a bitch, too.
Check it out: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/
I'm all for alternative medicines, but this sounds fraught with peril.
At least hookworms are out of sight and (unless there's a rupture into the bloodstream) out of mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
We've covered this material in both of the immunology courses at my university. It's a fairly uncontroversial idea nowadays (and it should be that way, given the evidence).
You might have this idea that you're somehow a biologically independent organism from the commensals in your gut and skin, but you're not. Humans (and other animals, of course) evolved symbiotically with their intestinal flora, and are heavily dependent on it for survival.
If still you feel that this is yucky, remember that you have about three pounds of bacteria in your gut (at least in an average healthy human adult), and you need it to live!
This does not mean that we shouldn't find another way of treating people (with a vaccine that stimulates IgE production against worms, for instance). For the moment, however, worms are cheap (and they appear to work). And if you purify your culture properly, they really aren't a bad idea; clinical trials with them are underway for a variety of conditions (MS, for one).
Finally, remember that anti-vaccine nutters often invoke phrases such as "fraught with peril" when railing against vaccines. But consider the peril we would all be in without them!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy
I have a personal interest in any new treatments for MS so I am following this topic with great enthusiasm.
I'm well aware of the bacteria and other creepy crawlies living in my body.
Common sense, to me, dictates that introducing other living cultures into my body seems to be a bit dangerous and fraught with potential unintended consequences, to further clarify my "fraught with peril" comment from earlier.
So, to that end, I can't tell you from any sort of personal experience or learned knowledge whether they work. It just seems like something I wouldn't want. Irrational? Maybe.
Sorta reminds me of the old comedian standby joke: "who was the first guy to look at a cow teat and say 'we're all going to drink what comes out of THAT?'"