Pig Worms and Auto Immune Disease? Heck No! …well- Maybe
Chronic pain can be a great motivator. I am currently on the no-starch diet to decrease my inflammation and i have to say, that’s not too far off from pig worms if you ask me. Basically just cut out all the food you like. Anyway, If you had a rheumatoid arthritis or Crohn’s disease, and swallowing the eggs of a pig parasite might help, could you do it?
Their is a team at Coronado Biosciences Inc that is banking on it.
The Massachusetts company is developing what it hopes will be a new class of treatments for autoimmune conditions. The dosage consists of thousands of microscopic parasite eggs, taken from pig feces, and added to a tablespoon of saline solution. You take it like you would cough syrup.
“In a pig, the eggs would grow into mature whipworms and reproduce, without harming their host. In humans, the same eggs barely survive two weeks.” Yet in that short amount of time it seems that they are actually changing the immune system and retraining it to prevent it from attacking the body’s own organs.
This has huge potential into what has been a difficult disease process to nail down. Dr. Joel Weinstock, Chief of gastroenterology and hepatology puts it like this, “It has the potential not only to be a drug but to provide insight into the cause of these diseases. The company is preparing to enroll 220 patients with Crohn’s disease in a midstage clinical trial. Participants will receive either a dose with 7,500 eggs from a pig whipworm or a placebo once every two weeks for 12 weeks.”
It sounds tough, and I don’t think i would offer to be a guniea pig, but like I said, Pain is a great motivator. Is your
What do you think?