Aajonus wrote about Trichinosis being desirable to have as part of your gut flora. This idea is based off the research of Dr. Joel V. Weinstock, MD, Gastroenterologist.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3744107/TESTING A THEORY
When I returned to my laboratory (then at the University of Iowa in Iowa City), I told my colleagues about my theory. Some of them were intrigued and wanted to start experiments. Others thought I was joking.
We had access to parasitic worms — already a focus of our research — and to mouse models of inflammatory bowel disease. Sure enough, when we gave the mice enteric worms such as Heligmosomoides bakeri or Trichuris muris by feeding tube5, or schistosome eggs by injection6, the animals were protected from autoimmune disease.
To test the therapy in humans, we selected Trichuris suis, a whipworm that typically infects pigs but can survive for a few months in people. Evidence suggested that this was a safe choice — if swallowed, the worm remains in the gut and does not pass into the bloodstream, and pig farmers are commonly exposed to it without medical reports of associated illness.
We began with a dose of 2,500 eggs — one investigator in an earlier study had given themselves a similar dose to prove that this organism could colonize the human intestine, and reported no clinical symptoms7. We infected pigs with T. suis eggs, then isolated adult worms from the infected animals and cultured them in vitro. The worms survived long enough to produce eggs that could be harvested and cleaned for clinical use.
Our institutional review committee gave us permission to try a dose in one patient. It was not hard to find a volunteer; many patients with inflammatory disease do not do well on conventional therapy and readily seek alternative approaches. The first patient in the study had untreatable Crohn's disease, and he eagerly consumed the 2,500 nearly microscopic eggs, which we gave to him in a popular sports drink. We held our breaths.
After six weeks — the time it takes for T. suis eggs to mature into adult worms — he reported no adverse events and showed improvement in disease symptoms that lasted for several months. Three more patients with Crohn's and another three with ulcerative colitis all reported substantial improvements (or complete remission), with no side effects.
Eventually, we administered live eggs every two weeks for 24 weeks to 29 patients with Crohn's disease. By week 24, nearly 80% of them reported a decrease in symptoms, and 72% were in remission — more than one would expect from a placebo effect. None reported side effects8. In another trial of 54 patients with ulcerative colitis, about half of whom were given placebo, 43% of helminth-treated patients improved after 12 weeks, compared with only 17% of those given a placebo9.
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