Human evolution; we may need GI worms (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, May 28, 2019, 18:34 (2004 days ago) @ David Turell

An interesting comment on how we have approached our health and GI biome:

https://aeon.co/essays/gut-worms-were-once-a-cause-of-disease-now-they-are-a-cure?utm_s...

"What if our bias against a handful of helminths led us to slaughter billions of innocent and even helpful worms? Indeed, my research and the research of many others tell us that helminths are necessary for our health. A barrage of scientific evidence points toward helminths as being important regulators of immune function. Because of this, our genocidal campaign against intestinal worms apparently has a very nasty backlash that nobody saw coming. But science moves very slowly. All helminths are still labelled as parasites in textbooks, despite the fact that we now know this to be incorrect.

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"The immune system was actually supporting rather than fighting off most of the bacteria in our body! This paradigm-shifting idea had far-reaching implications for the field of immunity. For example, the function of the vermiform (worm-like) appendix, that troublesome little structure in our gut, could now be seen clearly as a type of safe house for beneficial bacteria.

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"These early observations led to numerous additional studies, summarised in 2004 by Rick Maizels at the University of Edinburgh, showing inverse relationships between helminths and allergies in various human populations. At the same time, Maizels also compiled an impressive list of studies using laboratory mice, showing that helminths attenuate a multiple sclerosis (MS)-like syndrome, a Type 1 diabetes-like condition, inflammatory bowel disease, gastric ulcers and allergic reactions, including allergic reactions to peanuts.

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"My own research has shown that thousands of humans are now using intestinal worms, from a variety of sources, to effectively treat a wide range of allergic, autoimmune and digestive diseases. Based on previous studies, we were not surprised that people were having success. But we did find one puzzler: people and their doctors were reporting that helminths were helping to treat neuropsychiatric problems such as anxiety disorders and migraine headaches.

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"The thought of actually using a helminth as a cure doesn’t seem to be under consideration, perhaps because we are locked into the view that only a drug can help us.

"But based on available evidence, we and others conclude that we don’t need to take the risky and potentially very long route of trying to make a worm-inspired drug. In fact, trying to recapitulate a complex biological relationship using a single molecule in a pill might be a lost cause. In contrast, the naturally occurring worm will apparently work just fine.

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"The ‘poop transplant’ – officially called the faecal microbiota transplantation – now widely appreciated by medical researchers, is a truly tragic example of this problem. The transfer of faecal material from a healthy donor to an unhealthy one was shown, as long ago as 1958, to cure Clostridium difficile colitis.

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"Reintroduction of helminths to the human body and poop transplants share several things in common. First, they involve naturally occurring organisms that are difficult to patent. With no patent, or ‘intellectual property’, the financial incentive for developing the associated therapy vanishes.

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A second thing that helminths and poop transplants share in common is that they don’t require any of the panoply of modern molecular, genetic tools to sort out what’s going on. What was lost has been found, and now the biological system is restored. It’s easy to comprehend, akin to a vitamin, with no PhD required to grasp the picture.

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"The lack of acceptance of proven and commonsense therapies such as faecal transplants is yet another. Failure to fund work aimed at the reintroduction of intestinal worms to alleviate inflammatory disease, despite compelling evidence from the laboratory, is another indication still. Why did we do all of those successful experiments with therapeutic helminths if nobody is going to translate them to the clinic?"

Comment: Thinking outside the box! Helminths, human round worms, may well be beneficial. Our reasoning about what evolution has produced in us is often very wrong: the appendix is not vestigial, the retina is a marvelous efficient structure, not 'backwards'. We should trust what evolution has given us. Nothing is poorly designed. Pre-modern humans obviously lived with beneficial worms. Accept it!