How parasitic worms cure inflammatory bowel disease Inflammatory bowel disease sufferers (IBD, including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis) experience a variety of unpleasant symptoms such as abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, rectal bleeding, severe internal cramps/muscle spasms in the region of the pelvis and weight loss. The causes of these diseases are complex and not well understood, but the incidence of IBD is highest in industrialized regions where helminth (parasitic worm) infections have been largely eliminated. This raises the possibility that helminth infections may protect against intestinal inflammation underlying the disease (Inflammatory bowel disease: cause and immunobiology. (2007) The Lancet, 369 (9573), 1627-1640). But no-one wants to be infected with parasitic worms – do they? IBD is so unpleasant that a number of clincial trials involving deliberate infection of informed volunteers with Trichuris suis have been carried out – with some success (Helminths as governors of inflammatory bowel disease. (2008) Gut, 57(8), 1182-1183). Exactly how the worms help to quell the inflammatory symptoms remained to be completely explained. Monkeys kept in captivity at Primate Research Centers often develop chronic diarrhoea and bowel disease which shares many features with ulcerative colitis. A new paper tested treatment of captive macaques suffering from this condition with human whipworms. Four out of five treated macaques showed reduced symptoms. After treatment with worms, the monkeys had less bacteria attached to their intestinal wall and a reduced inflammatory response to the gut bacteria. Also, the composition of gut bacteria which was altered in the sick macaques was restored close to the normal flora after treatment with whipworms. These results provide a potential mechanism by which parasitic worms may improve the symptoms of intestinal inflammation, by reducing the immune response against intestinal bacteria. see more : microbiologybytes.wordpress/2012/11/23/parasitic-worms-cure-inflammatory-bowel-disease/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Microbiologybytes+%28MicrobiologyB
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 11:48:39 +0000
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