I got worms.

I tried to access the parasitic worm article that Dr. Cohen posted but couldn’t without subscribing so I did a little snooping around to see what I could find out about the Helminthic Therapy. As discussed in class, this is the method of trying to treat IBD by ingesting thousands of these parasitic worms. Apparently, researchers decided to try this out after seeing the positive correlation between the number of people inflicted with IBD and the level of industrialization of the country they live in. The worms that they use are classes of parasitic intestinal nematodes, basically, worms that can live in the digestive tract.

First of all, the mechanisms behind this therapy seem to be that the T regulatory cells that secrete anti-inflammatory cytokines, require exposure to microorganisms that have low pathogenicity (i.e. helminth worms) to reach their full potential. To make the immune system stronger, it needs to be exposed to viruses, bacteria, and pathogens that won’t kill us, kind of like the idea behind vaccines. Whatever doesn’t kill us, just makes us stronger. This would help explain why the more industrialized a nation becomes, the more incidence of IBD are reported. It is kind of funny, the cleaner we get, the weaker we get.

Secondly, the administration of the therapy is as follows: “Patients are normally started with four separate doses taken every one to three weeks. Starting dose is normally 500 ova/dose, for the first 4 doses. Failure to respond to the first four doses will result in an increase in dose to 1000 ova/dose, up to a maximum of 2500 ova/dose every two weeks. A clinical trial on patients with ulcerative colitis indicated that 13 of 30 patients, given 2500 ova/dose bi-weekly for a twelve week period, showed improvement in their disease index activity. Better results were obtained in Crohn’s patients, with a 72% remission rate following eight doses of 2500 ova over a 24 week period. No side effects were reported in either study” (wikipedia).

Say goodbye to the 5 second rule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy