Strachan’s idea was that changes to sewage treatment, availability of clean water and food, and a shift away from farming lifestyles decreased our contact with soil, faeces and contaminated food where bacteria and parasites like helminths live. George’s University in London, published a landmark study proposing that improved hygiene in the developed world could explain trends in hay fever incidence. In 1989, David Strachan, an epidemiologist at St. Yet in developing countries, such conditions remain rare. Likewise, rates of autoimmune and immunoregulatory conditions such as Crohn’s diseases, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis have been on the rise. The price might be the surge in cases of asthma and allergies we’ve seen in western countries over the past 40 years. Hygiene does wonderful things, he realised, but there’s always a price for change. “While on the plane, I decided to play a game and pretend that it’s caused by the loss of something rather than the addition of something.” It was as if “a light suddenly went off”, Weinstock says, as parasites came to mind. “Over the years, people had looked for environmental factors that caused inflammatory bowel disease and hadn’t found anything,” Weinstock says. Joel Weinstock, now chief of the division of gastroenterology/hepatology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, struck upon the idea during a six-hour delay on the runway at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. The field has its origins in the early 1990s.
#How to get rid of hookworms in humans trial#
“It’s not proof, it’s not definitive, but at least it’s promising.”įleming’s trial in 2008 was the first to infect multiple sclerosis patients with live parasitic worms, also known as helminths, but others were also investigating their therapeutic potential. “The beauty of this is that the number of new lesions is really an objective, brutally honest answer,” Fleming says. Two months after discontinuing the worm treatment, the lesions rebounded to an average of 5.8. By the end of the study, that number had dropped to two. At the start of the trial, MRI scans showed patients had an average of 6.6 active lesions – scars on the protective layer around nerve cells that disrupt the transmission of electrical messages in the brain and spinal cord. "I couldn’t see the eggs or anything.”įor the next three months, he and four others visited the lab every two weeks to swallow doses of 2,500 parasite eggs. “It tasted a little bit salty but otherwise it was just water," says Turk. When Turk arrived at the clinic, John Fleming, a professor of neurology, presented him with a vial of clear liquid. “Plus I was terrified and didn’t know what to do.”
“I’ve always had a research interest so I decided to put my money where my mouth is,” Turk says.
Patients were being asked to infect themselves with live pig whipworm eggs to see if the parasites alleviated any of their symptoms or slowed the spread of telltale brain and spine lesions. The cure: not known yet.Ī month later, Turk saw an ad on the news seeking multiple sclerosis patients to try out an unusual new treatment at the University of Wisconsin, in his hometown of Madison. The diagnosis was obvious: multiple sclerosis, the autoimmune condition in which the body eats away at its own nerve cell casings. When he collapsed in the middle of a baseball field one sunny afternoon in 2008 while coaching his son’s team, he realised it was time to seek help.Īt the hospital, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans revealed plaques peppered throughout Turk’s brain and spine. Turk, then in his early thirties, blamed the combined pressures of juggling a full-time job, studying for a master's degree and his parenting responsibilities.
The self-described "health nut" who was in training to run marathons suddenly found himself unable to jog for more than a couple of minutes before coming to a gasping, staggering halt. Jim Turk initially put his symptoms down to stress.
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