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The Worms Crawl In
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: July 10th, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/health/research/01prof.htm...
While carrying out field work in Papua New Guinea in the late 1980s, [Dr. David Pritchard] noticed that Papuans infected with the Necator americanus hookworm, a parasite that lives in the human gut, did not suffer much from an assortment of autoimmune-related illnesses, including hay fever and asthma. Over the years, Dr. Pritchard has developed a theory to explain the phenomenon. "The allergic response evolved to help expel parasites, and we think the worms have found a way of switching off the immune system in order to survive," he said. "That's why infected people have fewer allergic symptoms." To test his theory, and to see whether he can translate it into therapeutic pay dirt, Dr. Pritchard is recruiting clinical trial participants willing to be infected with 10 hookworms each in hopes of banishing their allergies and asthma. Never one to sidestep his own experimental cures, Dr. Pritchard initially used himself as a subject. After Dr. Pritchard's self-infection experiment, the National Health Services ethics committee let him conduct a study in 2006 with 30 participants, 15 of whom received 10 hookworms each. Tests showed that after six weeks, the T-cells of the 15 worm recipients began to produce lower levels of chemicals associated with inflammatory response, indicating that their immune systems were more suppressed than those of the 15 placebo recipients. Despite playing host to small numbers of parasites, worm recipients reported little discomfort. Trial participants raved about their allergy symptoms disappearing.
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