Patient: “Doctor! Doctor! I’ve got an autoimmune disease!” Doctor: “Take 2,500 parasites and call me in a month.”
THE PROBLEM
Humans are too clean. That’s the theory that some scientists have come up with to explain why autoimmune conditions such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, multiple sclerosis, and asthma have reached epidemic proportions in the modern world. When bacteria were linked in the 19th century to devastating infectious diseases such as cholera and diphtheria, better hygiene and improved sanitation helped keep them in check. But over the last 60 years, a strange new trend toward chronic inflammatory diseases has cropped up in industrialized nations. And it’s getting worse.
The “hygiene hypothesis,” formulated in 1989 by British doctor David P. Strachan, claims that lack of exposure to infectious agents in our childhood years has made modern humans susceptible to allergies and a whole host of other ailments later in life. Strachan’s theory focuses on the need to expose humans to “good bugs” to strengthen the immune system. Since then, several scientists who have built upon the theory have suggested it be renamed the “old friends hypothesis.” Just who are these “old friends”? They’re certain parasitic worms and other helpful organisms that have co-existed with humans throughout our history.
Recent studies show that people in third-world countries—who are constantly exposed to dirty water, decaying vegetation, and unsanitary living conditions—rarely develop the autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases that plague more-developed countries. In effect, our obsessively hygienic life may have eliminated the “old friends” that once regulated our immune system, leaving us vulnerable to a host of diseases. It took millions of years for this synergistic relationship to develop, and less than a century to break it apart.
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Some researchers are now testing patients with helminthic therapy, which reintroduces these old friends to the immune system. In one study, doctors have their patients deliberately infest themselves with parasitic worms. Once inside, the tiny worms wriggle around and kick the immune system into high gear, supposedly strengthening its ability to fight disease. So far, say researchers, the results have been remarkable, leading some doctors to believe that worm therapy may benefit sufferers of arthritis, fibromyalgia, heart disease, atherosclerosis, eczema, irritable bowel syndrome, lupus, autism, migraine, and even psychiatric disorders.
But after a century of being told that parasites are bad for us, people are naturally apprehensive when a doctor places a cup full of tiny, slithering red worms in front of them and tells them to drink up. It took researchers at Nottingham University more than three years to recruit 52 candidates for their worm study. In contrast, it took them only one day to recruit 1,500 people for a trial to assess whether flavonoids, found naturally in chocolate, may ward off heart disease. (The researchers might get more test subjects if they were to dip the worms in chocolate sauce.)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve the therapy, so it may take some time—and a bit of “retraining”—before helminthic therapy worms its way into a doctor’s office near you.
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