THE BIOME BUZZ
BUGS AND WORMS AND OTHER GREAT STUFF
Category: Macrobiome
The Deworming Question: A Good Idea? Pointless? Detrimental? The Evidence Mounts…
Last month, a meta-analysis paper came out searching the medical literature through the year 2018, looking for evidence of the benefits promised by the worldwide efforts at deworming school children, recommended by all global advocacy organizations including WHO. The authors, from the Department of…
Helminths and Susceptibility to HIV?????????? A Medical Mystery Waiting to be Solved
A couple of times over the last year, I have described early stage research into the potential of helminths to prevent cancer? File this post under the same heading: the very beginning of a new area of research. Sometimes it just hits me how…
Neurodegnerative and Neuropsychiatric Disorders: Prime Targets for Helminths
Within just a few weeks of each other, two papers have been published looking at the potential of using helminths to treat neurological conditions. Not surprisingly, both focus on the powerful anti-inflammatory effect of helminths. (For those of you new to helminths: these are…
More on Helminths and the Prevention of Cancer
Last October, I wrote about a study that looked at the effects on cancer of the immune modulation afforded by helminths (intestinal worms), which are the main component of the mammalian macrobiome. That paper provided a very positive initial review of the mechanisms by…
Helminth Therapy: A Call to Action
An interesting opinion piece by Dr. William Parker, of Duke University, and colleagues at a couple of Czech Universities, just appeared in Trends in Parasitology.[i] To summarize, the paper makes two key points: A. These scientists hold the belief that the interaction between human…
Evolutionary Mismatch, the Human Biome…and a Bit More on Obesity
Recently there was a lot of discussion on the Biome Buzz’ Facebook page in regards to a post on obesity, wherein some people expressed their opinions that our current epidemic of obesity is due to nothing more than people eating too much junk food. …
Can Helminths Help Alleviate the Obesity Epidemic? The Evidence (Slowly) Mounts
Remember last week when I told you all that I have a million great new pieces of research to write about? Well, things have only gotten worse(or is it better?!) since then. I found a bunch more stuff to keep us all very busy…
An Obvious Solution to Treating IBD?
A short article about helminths and inflammatory bowel disease [IBD] was just published, and is absolutely worth a read (and post).[i] I’d almost call it an op-ed piece. It reads like this researcher is berating a medical system that is ignoring an obvious solution…
A Trio of New Helminth Papers
Three articles were recently published on helminths that are worth sharing with you. Two studied the immune effects (in rodents) of the species, Hymenolepis diminuta. (This species is native to rodents and one currently used in helminthic therapy.) The third summarized research into using…
Helminths in the Lay Press: A Few Interesting Tidbits
A couple of articles about helminths have appeared recently in the lay press that struck me for various reasons. While it’s always great to see helminth therapy getting good press, unfortunately, there tends to be misinformation printed that can often do more harm than…
