"Old Friend Hypothesis"

When treating patients with autoimmune disease, parasites might not be the first option to consider. However recent study and research has revealed startling connections between parasites and the treatment of autoimmune diseases. In 2007, a parasitic immunologist met with a man with ulcerative colitis and was shocked at how he was able to cope with the disease. Ulcerative colitis is an autoimmune disease in which the colon becomes inflamed causing the formation of open sores that leads to intense abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea and many other problematic symptoms. However, this man experienced none of these symptoms. He was able to successfully cope with this debilitating disease by infecting himself with parasites, in this case, tiny worm like parasite known as helminthes. It turns out these parasites in the intestines helped ease the autoimmune disease by enabling the secretion of mucus which naturally remedied the sores caused by the autoimmune respond. These worms helped right the ship that is the autoimmune system. Due to the presences of these worms, the immune system redirected its attention to the treatment of the infection of the worms and less on destroying the intestine and ironically, the way to treat the worms was the production of IL-22 which aids in wound healing and mucus production. As a result, the immune system makes up for the damage it caused and remarkably reduced the onset of ulcerative colitis. Today, further studies have been put into this unique method of dealing with autoimmune disease. Researches have shown that parasites have always been on our side when fighting autoimmune disease. A study has shown that less developed country often do not exhibit high incident of autoimmune compared to more developed counties. The reason is that parasites like helminthes are more prevalent in less developed countries which actually aids in the defense against autoimmunes, something more industrialized countries like the United States lack ("old friend hypothesis"). Promising results like this has pushed scientist and researchers to further look into finding ways to utilize this usual treatment.

Overall, this was a very interesting article. It certainly was surprising how methods of treatment can come from the most unlikely of sources. It also goes to show how diverse our body can be by using natural solutions to cure problems like autoimmune disease whereas modern medicine cannot. This definitely is an area of research that can be groundbreaking and highly risky. People will certainly have adjusted at the thought of using parasites for treatment but it a step in the right direction when considering how much people are suffering from disease like Ulcerative colitis.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=helminthic-therapy-mucus