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pig whipworm eggs to combat autoimmune diseases

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Posted 3/29/2006 5:49 AM (GMT -7)
there is a cover story on usa today about a study on fighting crohn's disease by drinking pig whipworm eggs to distract the immune system in autoimmune disorders. any chance that may work or at least be tried in other autoimmune diseases such as alopecia areata or vitiligo?

herwig eyes
Posted 4/4/2006 4:51 AM (GMT -7)
This is an interestingone. I have Autoimmune hepatitis. I wonder if it would work there? I have never heard of pig whipworm eggs. Can you explain what they are.

Marg
Posted 4/4/2006 5:32 AM (GMT -7)
Hi Herwig welcome to Healingwell. I doubt that pig whipworm eggs will benefit people with skin conditions (due to autoimmune diseases) since these eggs are normally confined to the intestinal tract and are short lived. This research is still ongoing and who knows what it will produce in the future but for right now they are concentrating on using these eggs for people with IBD's. I hope that soon they can find that these beneficial little buggers can help even more people with different AI's.
Marg, pig whipworm eggs are simply that, Whipworm. Pig and human share many of the same properties in of the immune system which is why sometimes you will hear of transplants from pig donors. These are whipworm eggs that have shown to have an improvement in people with Crohns and Ulcerative colitis due to some techinical jargon that I couldn't quite understand, but basically it helps reboot the immune system for the intestinal tract. These eggs do not live very long in the human intestine because our flora is not quite compatible with the flourishing eggs. It is being researched still so very little is known about the potential health benefits of this.
I truly hope one day they will find the magic pill (or parasite) that can cure us all.
Posted 4/5/2006 6:11 AM (GMT -7)
The whipworms promote what is known as Th2 type response rather than a Th1 response. The Th1 bias drives the immune response down a cell mediated route and it is these cells that produce the pro-inflammatory cytokines that cause the damage in people with IBD. Same holds for autoimmunity in general, Th2 good, Th1 bad; whether whipworms can act systemically for other diseases such as AIH, is too early to say.
Posted 4/7/2006 7:09 AM (GMT -7)
tongue
I am very pleased about the instant feedback I got for my first posting! I wonder whether this is the right forum to discuss alopecia areata and vitiligo - two autoimmune diseases I am suffering from. I have tried numerous remedies over the last 10 years, so far to little and only temporary avail (I did recover all my hair - after having gone completely bald within three months - after a 1 year treatment with DCP - diphenolcyclopropenone, but lost all my hair after I had to stop the treatment due to the development of vitiligo, a rare side effect), and I am currently trying out Goji juice - does anybody have any experience with Goji and alopecia areata? A woman in Canada apparently got her hair back after having been bald for 20 years following a 6 month "treatment" with Goji... I would appreciate any feedback on that or alternative treatments that worked for some of you, though I have come to like the way I look eyes

all the best

Herwig
Posted 4/7/2006 9:47 PM (GMT -7)
Hey all,

I've recently developed moderate asthma, but also have Crohn's, which is associated with an increased risk of asthma. Keah, one of the moderators on the Crohn's forum, went to the trouble of importing Ovamed's Helminth eggs into the U.S. and did a round of treatment. She has a webite/blog that documents her experience. As I recall, she experienced modest improvement in symptoms. Read for yourself at http://journals.aol.com/keah/KeahsTSOJournal/. The bottom line is that, based on her experience, the worms aren't exactly a cure, even for Crohn's.

Cheers,
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