Editorial: "Let them eat worms"
People guzzling concoctions of worms to relieve their immune disorders are inspiring scientists to take parasite therapy seriously
THE ingredients seemed simple enough: water, sugar, salt and a smidgen of stool from a generous friend. Within a month, Sally had a dish of warm water brimming with hundreds of helminths - tiny worm-like parasites growing inside eggs from her friend's faeces. She plucked 500 eggs onto a microscope slide and licked it clean. The parasites, she hoped, would colonise her gut, modify her immune system and cure her severe allergies.
Sally belongs to a growing community of people with immune disorders who are isolating and breeding parasitic worms for themselves, their friends and their customers. The idea is that helminths, which chemically bewitch the immune systems of their hosts in order to survive, can temper the overzealous immune system behind disorders like Crohn's ...
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