ignatz mouse
Mistress of Tranquility
Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Still Orygun
Posts: 10478 |
 nobody loves me everybody hates me I'm gonna eat some worms!
quote:
Parasitic Worm Hope for Crohn's
Parasitic worms may be an effective
treatment for the inflammatory bowel
disorder Crohn's disease, research in the
US suggests.
A University of Iowa team found most of 29
Crohn's patients who swallowed a type of
parasitic worm over a 24-week period
showed an improvement.
It is thought that helminths, such as
roundworms and threadworms, may prevent
Crohn's in the developing world.
The research is published in the journal Gut.
Crohn's disease rates are relatively high in
the developed world, where few people carry
helminths.
But in the developing world, where it is
relatively common for people to harbour
these worms, rates of Crohn's are much lower.
In the developing world it is common for the worms' eggs to contaminate food, water, air,
And they are also found on toilet seats and door handles. Once inside the body, the eggs
usually lodge in the bowel, where they hatch into worms.
Unlike other parasitic worms, such as tapeworms, they do not cause disease, and do not
invade other parts of the body.
In the latest study, 29 adults with moderately active Crohn's disease swallowed 2,500
whipworm eggs of the species Trichuris suis - commonly found in pigs - every three
weeks for 24 weeks in total.
Most of the patients had had their symptoms for around four years and standard
treatment had not worked.
Impressive results
Five patients dropped out, but halfway through, 22 patients had experienced a significant
improvement in their symptoms, with 19 of them having no symptoms at all.
By the end of the study, all but one had shown an improvement, with 21 reporting no
symptoms.
There were no signs that the worms had caused any side effects, but people also taking
drugs to suppress their immune system at the same time tended to fare better.
Crohn's disease is caused by an excessive immune response to normal gut bacteria, and
the researchers say that helminths suppress the immune response and consequently
dampen down inflammation.
As such they might provide a simple alternative to current medications, or could be used in
combination.
They stress that the worms' eggs are shed in the stool, but cannot colonise another host
until they have been incubated in the soil for several weeks, and so are unlikely to pose a
public health risk.
However, they accept that larger trials are needed to confirm their results.
Dr Alastair Forbes, a consultant gastroenterologist at St Mark's Hospital, London, and spokesman for the National Association for Colitis and Crohn's Disease, said the research
was interesting, but still at an early stage.
"It makes sense. What they are trying to do is to create a sort of anti-inflammatory
response," he told the BBC News website.
"It seems remarkable that some people are prepared to be infected with worms, but the
fact that they are says a lot about how poor current treatments are."
However, Dr Forbes said more work was needed to ensure the therapy was safe.
"People with Crohn's tend to have leaky bowels, so something that would not normally
get into the circulation might do so in somebody with the disease," he said.
I wonder if the five who dropped out decided having leaky bowels was less disgusting than eating worm eggs.
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12-14-2004 10:48 PM
