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Category Archives: news

Human Whipworms (trichuris trichiura) help Ulcerative Colitis

Many articles came out today about the case study of a man with ulcerative colitis who used human whipworms  (trichuris trichiura) as therapy for UC, with colonoscopy samples to supply information on inflammatory pathways and mucus secretion in relation to these helminths: http://www.livescience.com/health/worm-therapy-stimulates-gut-mucus-101201.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/la-heb-worm-healing-20101201,0,2645483.story http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-heb-worm-healing-20101201/10 From Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=helminthic-therapy-mucus For the Good of the Gut: [...]

News page and parasite film

I added a “news” page that lists all the available press on helminthic therapy.  I’ll do another page on the research when I have time. There’s a new film about to be released on using parasites as therapy by Sharon Shattuck called “Parasites: A User’s Guide”. Click on helminthic therapy and scroll down for a [...]

To the Medical Community

Article after article extolling the virtues of helminths’ ability to prevent allergies and autoimmune diseases always end in quotes like this: “The hope is that the work could aid the development of new treatments which work in the same way as gut parasites, by dampening down or rebalancing the immune system so that the body [...]

Huge Study Proves Helminths Prevent Allergy to Dust-Mites

A new article from BBC News about the link beteen (lack of) parasites and allergy to dust mites. This is a very large study;1500+ schoolchildren in Vietnam. They gave 1/2 deworming tablets, and studied them for some period of time. Those without worms had a significantly increased allergy to dust mites. There wasn’t any conslusive [...]

Great RadioLab show on Parasites

Very entertaining radio show on parasites: http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/09/07/parasites/ And no, this isn’t an alien… First, they start with Carl Zimmer, a parasitologist who talks about amazing interactions between parasites and hosts.  Then they discuss the hookworm eradication project, where it was found that the South was suffering from anemia, not laziness, and outhouses changed the course [...]