The Worms Turn… and a Patient Recovers
A CNN report describes a motivated ulcerative colitis patient arranging for his own experimental treatment. Experimenting on yourself is frowned upon, but that patient persevered and is doing better.
Meanwhile, the patient had gone on the internet and found an article in a medical journal by Dr. Joel Weinstock, chief of gastroenterology at Tufts University Medical School, which showed some ulcerative colitis patients found relief after ingesting the trichuris suis worm, a parasite that lives in the intestines of pigs.
The patient contacted Weinstock to ask him to treat him with worms, but Weinstock said no, since it wasn’t approved for general use by the Food and Drug Administration and could only be done experimentally.
I had contacted Dr. Weinstock myself back in 2004, and got the same answer. I did inquire about being included in experimental trials, and there was nothing planned for anytime soon, if I recall correctly. Within a month of that, I was in the hospital having my emergency colectomy, so it became a moot point for me.
Weinstock’s original experimental trials, going on memory, showed better rates of remission for Crohn’s disease than for ulcerative colitis. But the ulcerative colitis numbers were enough to motivate the patient of the article to action.
I had wondered about whether the Trichuris suis eggs might be available simply by ordering from a biological supply company, but a quick Google search does not show any such easy route. The patient instead decided to go ahead with using the human parasite Trichuris trichuria, traveling to Thailand to put himself within a population where T. trichuria infection is commonly endemic. He paid a doctor there to collect eggs from the stool of a young girl with a nematode infection. He had to figure out egg hygiene and worm husbandry on his own, a critical set of steps that no one else would comment upon, probably based on liability issues. (His doctor told him if he proceeded not to come back to his office.)
The travel and general grossness of the whole process was offset by the outcome, which was periods of complete remission. On flare-ups, the patient would re-culture a set of nematodes to start over again. The patient located a doctor who was willing to help document his health status in relation to his parasite load, and the result was a recently-published research paper on the topic, leading to the CNN story.
“He e-mailed me, and I ignored it,” Loke remembers. “I was very skeptical at first, but he convinced me to have lunch with him.”
At their meeting, the patient laid out his story in more detail, and Loke became fascinated.
“It’s an amazing story, and he’s quite possibly one of the smartest people I know,” he says.
Of course, there are different opinions.
Hanauer, chief of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition at the University of Chicago, warned against making too many conclusions from one man’s positive experience with worms.
“We don’t make medical recommendations based on a single case report,” he says.
He says New York University was “irresponsible” for putting out a press release about the study, and criticized media outlets such as CNN for reporting on it.
“It’s ridiculous and incredibly inappropriate,” he says. “You’re driving people to go on the internet and buy these worms, and these are potentially pathogenic organisms. These eggs can invade the systems of people who are immune suppressed and cause infections.”
I always thought the cool part of Weinstock’s original research was the use of the pig parasite, Trichuris suis, in humans. The species-specific relation of parasite and host was stated as meaning the pig parasite could not complete its life cycle in the human host. The parasite load could be controlled simply by varying the rate of ingestion. It seems to me that the public health issue of increasing the abundance of a human parasite in communities where it is usually absent is salient, and another point in favor of use of the pig nematodes instead. Perhaps instead of Thailand, the patient might have visited a veterinary conference for livestock vets. I’m happy that he is finding relief, but I don’t think that he has found a generally applicable approach to helminthic therapy for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. I hope that Dr. Weinstock, the original researcher, is able to continue with his research on the topic, given the various points in favor of his choice of helminthic agent.
I disagree with your statement that pig parasites are better than the human parasites. Human parasites are much better equipped and designed for co-existence with humans. They don’t reproduce in the human body, so their number is controlled. They live for 3-4 years, so they only need to be taken very rarely. They don’t have any side effects in small numbers and they balance the immune Th2 response with Th1, suppressing autoimmune diseases and putting them in remission. I myself was able to put my Crohn’s disease in remission by getting 35 hookworms. I got some whipworms as well. I will post another comment with links to more info on helminthic therapy.
So if you’re new to helminthic therapy, here’s what I would read first:
http://evmedreview.com/?p=457
This link explains the basics of the theory behind helminthic therapy. It really makes a lot of sense. As you can see it should help autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, allergies, psoriasis, Sjogren’s, Hashimoto’s, narcolepsy, type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis, etc.
Then read all pages of this post
http://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=17&m=1914181 on the forum and all the posts that follow – they contain some of my story and the answers to common questions that forum members asked.
Then go through http://opensourcehelminththerapy.org/ – especially through the “Studies & Papers” link – it has a google doc link http://goo.gl/CFsY to over 120 research papers that I collected over the last year. “Links” – has links to various blogs. “HT in the media” – has a great collection of various media articles. Read the top 5-6 at least.
Look through the posts on my wall http://www.facebook.com/Helminthic.Therapy?v=wall over the last 6 months – I post a lot of articles about helminthic therapy.
Review this note on the supplements that I recommend:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=172543709440305
This is the latest news article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=helminthic-therapy-mucus#comments In Scientific American. Also read the comments on the bottom.
I had Crohn’s for 16 years, had 3 resection surgeries, 1 blood transfusion, and all medications traditional medicine had to offer. I was able to stop Humira and I am now in a full remission off all medications. I also lost allergies to avocado, peaches, cherries, plums, nectarines, apricots.
Please don’t hesitate to msg me and ask me about my experience if you have any questions.
Thanks for the reply and links.
I’m not convinced about “better equipped and designed for co-existence with humans”. Parasite virulence is not universally something that diminishes over time. A parasite that improves its host-to-host transmission with increased virulence is likely to evolve that way. While host-to-host transmission is rare, less virulent variants will prosper. As host-to-host transmission becomes more common, increased virulence may well also improve transmission rates.
Besides the life-cycle question, there is the public health issue. According to Wikipedia, 2.2 million people in the USA may be infected with Trichuris trichuria. Indiscriminate therapeutic use may put others in the community at risk and disturb that parasite-host accommodation you value.
It seems to me that the only definitive answer would be a comparative study of the effectiveness of the two species in controlling disease coupled with an epidemiological risk assessment of increased prevalence of the two species due to treatment regimens and ancillary infection. Until we get that sort of handle on the situation, I think TSO treatment makes better sense.
I’d love to see an actual source for wikipedia’s claim of 2.2 million for whipworms.
In any case, both Necator Americanus and Trichuris Trichiura require a 2-3 week incubation in soil under very specific humidity, pH and temperature without which hookworm larvae will not become infectious and without which whipworm eggs will not embryonate and become infectious.
Did you follow all the links that I pasted in the previous post?
Nope. Did I miss a comparative treatment study and an epidemiological study?
You missed some important stuff. Read the links.
Important stuff including a comparative treatment study and an epidemiological study?