All right, this is just plain distressing. If you’re at all squeamish about parasites, read on at your own risk.
Researchers at the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde are trying to understand why auto immune disease like rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis are so rare in countries where parasitic worm infections are common.
Yes, that’s right. Parasites living inside the bodies of populations from tropical regions without causing them any trouble at all. And perhaps, strangely, providing some benefit. Which leaves you to wonder if Mother Nature doesn’t know just exactly what she’s doing…
The scientific community is well aware of an inverse relationship between worm infections and diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, type-1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis. Countries where people are naturally infected with this particular parasite seem to have lower rates of these conditions overall.
Luckily for the squeamish among us, it’s not the parasitic filarial nematode worm that the Scots scientists are after, it’s a large molecule they secrete known as ES-62.
This substance is found in the bloodstream of infected people in the tropics, and seems to provide some protective benefit against the inflammation the worms should be causing in their human hosts.
ES-62 has no adverse effects, leaving the body perfectly able to fight other infections.
“ES-62 appears to act like a ‘thermostat’ to effectively turn down disease-causing inflammation while leaving essential defense mechanisms intact to fight infection and cancer,” according to Iain McInnes, a member of the research team and Professor of Experimental Medicine at the University of Glasgow.
“This property also makes ES-62 a unique tool for scientists to identifying how such disease-causing inflammation occurs.”
Continues below…
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How A Parasite Might Hold Clues To Treating Auto Immune Diseases continued…
The team is going to try and produce a synthetic (again… whew!) version of the molecule from the worms in an effort to come up with an anti inflammatory therapy that works for auto immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. The three year study is funded by the UK’s Arthritis Research Campaign.
Earlier work has shown ES-62 to have potential as a therapy for allergies.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a potentially crippling joint disease that comes as a result of your immune system attacking itself. Inflammation in the joints and internal organs is the result.
Today there is no cure for this debilitating condition, but there is lots of research, and treatments that help take down the painful inflammation and keep joint damage to a minimum.
