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Wonderful Worms
The Osgood File (CBS Radio Network): 3/24/00
Have a sensitive stomach? Perhaps the next thing your doctor will prescribe is a dose of worm eggs.
Take a glass of Gatorade, add two dashes of worm eggs and swallow. Researchers at the University of Iowa hope that the drink can cure patients of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a painful and chronic condition that debilitates one million Americans. Lead scientist Joel Weinstock believes that IBD may be a result of our quest for cleanliness, which may have killed off some intestinal worms that actually aid the immune system's fight against the disease.
IBD's painful symptoms can be treated, but there's no cure short of removing the patient's colon. Several years ago, Dr. Weinstock happened upon a telling trend in the disease's history in this country. Its slow spread west and south from New York in the 1930s seems to coincide with great improvements in sanitation, such as indoor plumbing, pavement, and filtered drinking water. In other words, our increasing cleanliness as a society made us more likely to get IBD by destroying friendly worms that had long resided in our intestines. Dr. Weinstock hypothesized that reintroducing these worms into the digestive systems of IBD sufferers might help with the symptoms.
After getting approval from the University of Iowa, Dr. Weinstock and his team started administering worm eggs in Gatorade to six IBD patients. As the worms grew in their bowels, each patient found his or her conditions improve with no side effects, and five of the six felt completely cured. Dr. Weinstock believes that IBD sufferers have overly aggressive immune systems that attack the intestines, and that the presence of worms (or helminths, as they're called by scientists) actually prevents that attack by calming the immune system. Weinstock, knowing full-scale studies with a large sample and control group are necessary to prove his hypothesis, has scheduled tests for 2000.
February 2001: Weinstock began a more rigorous clinical test of the helminthic treatment of IBD at the University of Iowa at the end of 2000. This ongoing 125-patient test is double-blind and its results will distinguish between concrete improvement and potential psychosomatic response. A similar study of the treatment's effect on ulcerative colitis has also begun, and results from both of these tests are tentatively due in Spring 2002.
CONTACTS
Joel V. Weinstock, M.D.: Professor and Director
Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology
Department of Internal Medicine
University of Iowa College of Medicine
200 CMAB
Iowa City, Iowa 52242
Fax: (319) 353-6399
Phone: (319) 356-2132
LINKS
In this PatientCommunity.com interview, Dr. Weinstock answers questions in detail about his helminthic therapy.
The Web site for the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America spotlights research being done to cure and prevent Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis (commonly lumped together as inflammatory bowel disease). It features news on clinical trials, an article library, a doctor directory, and extensive links.
About.com has information on Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
The Scripps Clinic provides answers to a list of frequently asked questions on inflammatory bowel syndrome.
ACFnewsource provides links to sites maintained by other o rganizations for informational purposes only. ACFnewsource has no responsibility for the accuracy of the content of any Web site to which a link is provided. Th e groups included on the list do not necessarily reflect the views of ACFnewsour ce. |
