Hookworms and Allergies

Off Topic
1

I thought this was fascinating:

A guy with severe allergies hears about hookworm infections possibly treating allergies and he decides to find out first hand. Reminds me of the doctor who proved h. Pylori was giving us ulcers:

(It’s a radio programme. You can stream the episode then skip to 34:30, it’s about 15 minutes long)

[Short version for those who don’t want to sit through the narrative, guy goes to Africa, walks through some poo to get hookworm infection, finds himself allergy and asthma free, starts collecting hookworms from his own poo and sells them online but gets shutdown by the FDA, flees and keeps his online worm store going but doesn’t ship to the US.]

On the one hand, I can’t blame the guy for trying it but I certainly think there might be some issues with him administering this treatment and potentially exposing others to an infection and introducing the parasite into our sewages systems and waterways. I admit I don’t know much about hookworms, but I wonder what might happen if everyone who is currently using singulair, nasonex and reactine started taking hookworms. Would our fresh water be at risk? How do other animals respond to hookworms? What about fish?

If you had bad asthma, Crohn’s or severe allergies, would you try it? Is it ethical to do so when the parasites you ingest go into a public sewage system? Or is it any worse than excreting massive amounts of mast cell stabilizers and anti-histamines?

Here’s the guy’s website:

Some other articles on the research:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/07/22/are-hookworms-the-next-claritin/

2

My girl gave me AIDS to cure my herpes

3

[quote]debraD wrote:
I thought this was fascinating:

A guy with severe allergies hears about hookworm infections possibly treating allergies and he decides to find out first hand. Reminds me of the doctor who proved h. Pylori was giving us ulcers:

(It’s a radio programme. You can stream the episode then skip to 34:30, it’s about 15 minutes long)

[Short version for those who don’t want to sit through the narrative, guy goes to Africa, walks through some poo to get hookworm infection, finds himself allergy and asthma free, starts collecting hookworms from his own poo and sells them online but gets shutdown by the FDA, flees and keeps his online worm store going but doesn’t ship to the US.]

On the one hand, I can’t blame the guy for trying it but I certainly think there might be some issues with him administering this treatment and potentially exposing others to an infection and introducing the parasite into our sewages systems and waterways. I admit I don’t know much about hookworms, but I wonder what might happen if everyone who is currently using singulair, nasonex and reactine started taking hookworms. Would our fresh water be at risk? How do other animals respond to hookworms? What about fish?

If you had bad asthma, Crohn’s or severe allergies, would you try it? Is it ethical to do so when the parasites you ingest go into a public sewage system? Or is it any worse than excreting massive amounts of mast cell stabilizers and anti-histamines?

Here’s the guy’s website:

Some other articles on the research:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/07/22/are-hookworms-the-next-claritin/

[/quote]

Water is heavily treated, there would be a very slim chance of any eggs being able to re-enter the water chain after treatment.

Hookworms can infect other animals such as dogs, fish at least to my knowledge, cannot get infected because the host range of hookworms is not that broad. I don’t see anything wrong with someone deliberately infecting themselves, but I would prefer to have limited contact with someone infected.

4

There have been studies linking hookworm infection with impaired learning in children. Should there be a concern about some parents choosing to treat their children with hookworms playing in the sandbox with someone else’s kids?

5

[quote]debraD wrote:
There have been studies linking hookworm infection with impaired learning in children. Should there be a concern about some parents choosing to treat their children with hookworms playing in the sandbox with someone else’s kids? [/quote]

I would say that a sand pit being quite dry would not provide the conditions necessary for hookworm eggs to develop - still though I’m not sure I would want my kids exposed to infective larvae.

Most cases of hookworm are mild and this must be considered, a good parasite very often does not kill its host or even cause significant morbidity because that would be detrimental to long term suvival of the parasite if it had a slow life cycle.

Despite that, even if your kid did get infected it would probably be relatively easy to get treatment. In addition to all the current anthelmintics currently available a new family of amino-acetonitrile derivatives have come out on the market. So I cannot see resistance being an issue in the immediate future, long term is a different story though.

Besides there is a flip side to that coin, people who develop allergies (I have hay fever for instance and I can verifiy this) often under perform in summer exams. Exposure to worms at a young age might actually prevent the onset of allergies and in the long term aid their education.

Nobody knows why helminth infection staves of allergies for sure, it is thought that the immune system might get ‘bored’ in the absence of enough immune challenges. What is known is that allergies and the immune response to infection by worms appears to act, at least in part, through the same antibody family, i.e. IgE.

6

Regardless of efficacy, there’s a certain ewww factor. Hookworms feed on your blood. They have serrated teeth in their mouths to perforate the intestine and feed on you.

Even though my allergies suck pretty bad, I’m going to have to pass. Not to mention you’d be a walking/talking plague-bearer. The eggs pass in feces and are quite sticky.

Don’t wash your hands quite well enough and you could be passing hookworms to plenty of folks.

Ex. A. duodenale

7

[quote]Ghost22 wrote:
Regardless of efficacy, there’s a certain ewww factor. Hookworms feed on your blood. They have serrated teeth in their mouths to perforate the intestine and feed on you.

Even though my allergies suck pretty bad, I’m going to have to pass. Not to mention you’d be a walking/talking plague-bearer. The eggs pass in feces and are quite sticky.

Don’t wash your hands quite well enough and you could be passing hookworms to plenty of folks.

Ex. A. duodenale[/quote]

The eggs won’t infect you until they develop until they have molted to the L3 stage which will take a couple of weeks - they then have to hatch before burrowing through the skin. But I agree, I would not want to be infected with them, anti-histamines all the way.

8

[quote]Ghost22 wrote:
Regardless of efficacy, there’s a certain ewww factor. Hookworms feed on your blood. They have serrated teeth in their mouths to perforate the intestine and feed on you.

Even though my allergies suck pretty bad, I’m going to have to pass. Not to mention you’d be a walking/talking plague-bearer. The eggs pass in feces and are quite sticky.

Don’t wash your hands quite well enough and you could be passing hookworms to plenty of folks.

Ex. A. duodenale[/quote]

I have allergies pretty bad too such that I need to take singulair, reactine, nasonex and patenol every day but I still won’t be taking any hookworms…

But if I had bad asthma or a severe case of Crohn’s disease I might be willing to take my chances. I have a friend with a severe case of Crohn’s that is pretty debilitating.

9

yeah its weird and i heard this on npr last week, but the guy seemed pretty motivated to fix his condition - it must have really been bad.