• Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Idk, i'd want to see the balance sheet on the costs of auto-immune disorders vs the cost of carrying a parasite burden.

    I've heard somewhere that part of the immune system specialized for combatting parasites might go haywire and trigger auto-immune issues in some people when the population has very low or no parasite burden. I wonder if we could, idk, find some way to isolate a protein from parasites that would keep that sub-sytem busy and reduce the risk of autoimmune problems? Of course it might all be woo, or I just read it wrong.

    • Iraglassceiling [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      No you’re remembering it right, it’s called the Hygiene Hypothesis

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

      As far as isolating a protein from parasites it’s not a bad thought, but part of the “benefits” of helminth infection are probably due to active immunomodulation that they engage in to hide from the host immune system. You probably need the living worms, but we don’t know for sure.

      Getting infected with hookworms does seem to reduce autoimmune symptoms in people with existing disease, which is really interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy