Geekdrah, Volume 2

Same link, because this appeared as a sidebar to the article noted in the preceding post.

A new treatment for inflammatory bowel diseases may be worming its way into the medical armamentarium.

University of Iowa gastroenterologist Joel Weinstock developed the concoction, which consists of a popular beverage — he declines to name it — and 2,000 pig whipworm eggs per serving. The worms come from pigs raised at a local U.S. Department of Agriculture facility and then slaughtered.

It's generally held that in inflammatory bowel disease, the body's immune system is in "overdrive," as the article puts it, leading to persistent diarrhea, abdominal pain, and weight loss. Medications can relieve the symptoms but are no cure.

However, as part of their own natural defenses, intestinal worms dampen the immune response. Coupling that with his observation that such diseases are most common in industrialized countries, where the chances of people acquiring intestinal worms is small, gave Weinstock his idea.

Weinstock chose to test pig whipworms because they don't venture out of the gut, they don't survive more than six or eight weeks and they don't appear to make people sick. Their eggs are less than half the size of a grain of sand, so they're basically undetectable in Weinstock's drink. The worms, which are less than half an inch long and thinner than a human hair, emerge in the gut.

Weinstock has tested worm therapy in 120 patients with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, the two types of inflammatory bowel disease, which affect up to 1 million Americans. The treatment was tolerated well and appeared to improve symptoms. "It's likely to be effective in both diseases," Weinstock says. He hopes to conduct a larger, multicenter trial of the therapy.

Moral: There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.