A father’s determination to help his son resulted in an experimental treatment for autism that uses roundworms to modulate inflammatory immune responses - http://www.f1000scientist.com/article...
Mar 4, 2011
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I didn't realize autism had an auto-immune component.
- Paul Buchheit
Neither did. I always, without fail, give money to autism awareness and support groups. It's a very important thing for me.
- Akiva
Also, roundworms are gross.
- Akiva
That auto-immune component aspect isn't universally accepted, and at this time is considered more or a suspicious overlap in medical circles, but it is why you see many autistic children are treated and respond well to a gluten free diet.
- RAPatton
I read something about this recently. Very interesting...
- Ha3rvey (Free hugs)
Reminds me of Lorenzo's Oil.
- Rochelle
The autoimmune hypothesis for the etiology of autism is not totally wacko http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed... -- although the evidence is still scant. But treating any autoimmune disease with parasites hasn't quite yet gone mainstream.
- Victor Ganata
I would totally try this for any kind of auto-immune issue. I don't know why people have such a problem with worms.
- Paul Buchheit
people with auto-immune diseases are often in a lot of pain, and while they want to make things better, they also don't want to make anything worse, but they often will try most anything. (my wife has crohn's)
- RAPatton
Paul, I was kidding.
- Akiva
When I saw "roundworm", my first thought were pathogenic worms that cause fairly serious disease, but that's clearly not what they're using.
- Victor Ganata
Worms are yucky, but autism is worse... So, I'd deal with the yucky worms if I had to.
- Lisa L. Seifert
I was thinking of worms that burrow through your foot, up your leg, and into your liver or your lungs.
- Victor Ganata
This would also help explain the mysterious rise in autism (much like the rise in other auto-immune issues).
- Paul Buchheit
It's really difficult to disentangle the rise in incidence (of autism and of other diseases that are more definitively understood as autoimmune diseases) from the significant improvement in the sensitivity of diagnosis.
- Victor Ganata
@Paul mysterious rise in autism?
- piikummitus
My son has Asperger's (on the autistic spectrum) and he does have some food sensitivities. interesting idea, I need to read this more .
- Glenn Slaven
Saw this on Paul's blog. My first reaction was NO! Then I read the article. I was, and remain, of similar opinion as Victor Ganata @aswang Also, the young man was not diagnosed w/Asperger's syndrome, but with autism e.g. trying to gouge out eyes, self-concussing, mute fury, cognitive issues. Treatment w/pig whipworm was a last resort after other treatments were exhausted (interesting that risperdone was effective for awhile). The worm approach clearly needs LOTS more study, even tho it helped in this case.
- Ellie K
I think this was on Futurama.
- dmitrievmenov