Remember how we learned earlier on in the course how worms inside the human body was making kids more stupid? Well, its turns out according to new findings that intestinal worms may actually be good for you. Not only are these worms not hurting you, but they could actually be benefitting you at the same time!

Intestinal worms are categorized as helminths, or parasites that feed on the body of the host, draining the life out of them. This is true for many helminths such as tapeworms and hookworms, which can cause disease and sometimes death, but it turns out that not all are so bad. Lab studies have shown that some helminths can be extremely beneficial to the host. One lab showed that the presence of helminths in pregnant rats can actually protect the brain of the rat baby from inflammation. Along with this finding, the biggest randomized trail ever performed found that of the 2 million children in India being studied, mass treatment with a worm killing drug did not increase body weight or survival. In other words, since ridding the kids of worms did not improve health, it seems that the worms were doing no harm at all.

It has been thought that the reason for increases in inflammatory disease such as multiple sclerosis in industrialized civilization was due to the hygiene hypothesis, or simply keeping our surrounding environments too clean. It turns out though that the real reason is due to the loss of biodiversity inside our own body called biome depletion. The absence of some mutualistic worms is a big part of this increase in diseases. These helminths have been found to protect lab animals from various allergies and autoimmune conditions as well as reduce some types of cancer. In some controlled studies with humans, helminths have halted the progression of relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis as well as treated many people with inflammatory dowel disease without any reported adverse side effects.

Because helminths have been a part of the ecosystem of the human body for so many years, they have become an important working part of that system. Mutualistic helminths can help regulate immune function, forcing the body to build more immune cells, as well as producing their own anti-inflammatory molecules. A study recently showed that adding helminths to lab rats changed the balance of the gut ecosystem, making the bacteria come out to a healthier balance. Because of these findings, people are starting to use helminths therapeutically to treat some illnesses. “Helminthic therapy” as its called,  is not approved by the FDA, but worms can be bought from various companies. People using these helminths such as the rat tapeworm, report that their conditions were treated more effectively and with fewer side effects than with pharmaceutical use.

So why aren’t helminths being used more frequently? Even though it all sounds promising, the safety and effectiveness of these worms have to be further evaluated. Along with this,is that these helminths have to be available, affordable, and FDA-approved in order to really catch on in the medical community. Therefore, it turns out that not as worms are bad and make you stupid. In fact, some intestinal worms can actually be quite beneficial, but even though it sounds like all good news, I think there still needs to be a lot more testing and experimentation in order for these helminths to become widely accepted. So even though some test have been done, more tests on the effectiveness, side affects, and safety of these worms have to be conducted. I think this finding sounds promising and with a little more research it could be a huge step forward in treating inflammatory diseases and even help with cancer!

Some worms can be good!