So THATS where I've been going wrong, I shouldn't wear shoes on my travels...
guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle...
It all sounds pretty hilarious, but I expect there's some truth (hope?) in it. I remember a teacher in a developing-nation school telling me that she wanted to give the kids anti-parasite medicines. None of the teenagers there had ever heard of asthma or allergies.
I've read the article and if it does work can see why it would never become accepted, all the major drug companies would throw money at discrediting the research etc.
Hookworms on ebay?
I read about this chap a few year ago and was eager to try out the parasites... but then I learnt of his fees which, if I recall, were about £5,000.00 for thw worms... which kind of made me think it was a tad dodgy and, anyhow, I could not afford it...
If he had been charging £250.00, perhaps even £500.00, I would have taken a gamble on it but the sum he was charging just made me forget about it - is he still charging for the worms?
I am amazed that no medical body had not yet tested this though. Perhaps it works and no docs can get big pharma funding to research it?
He does not deserve to be pursued like a criminal though - sounds a very brave and dedicated person.
suddenly my asthma doesn't seem so bad!...eurgh...
suddenly my asthma doesn't seem so bad!
Bob, the reason no research is done on this by the pharmaceutical companies is they can't patent it and it would reduce their profits.
hookworm research
Professor David Pritchard in Nottingham is researching this - research.nottingham.ac.uk/V... 3 . [space added between last two characters]
He appears to think pharma will be interested:
""...‘If we can work out how these regulatory T-cells are switched on then the pharmaceutical industry can follow that up,’ says Professor Pritchard. ..."" Esp as patents for many 'blockbuster' treatments will be expiring in the next few years and biologicals are already being touted as the new big hope for Big Pharma.
Challenge will be to develop a safe treatment which doesn't risk major hookworm infection, which can be nasty.
initial trial results from Nottingham team reported
Professor Pritchard's team have recently reported some inital results, not wildly encouraging - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/200... ""Experimental hookworm infection: a randomized placebo-controlled trial in asthma "" (Clin Exp Allergy. 2010 Feb;40(2):299-306
abstract concludes:
""...Experimental infection with ten hookworm larvae in asthma did not result in significant improvement in bronchial responsiveness or other measures of asthma control in this study. However, infection was well tolerated and resulted in a non-significant improvement in airway responsiveness, indicating that further studies that mimic more closely natural infection are feasible and should be undertaken. ...
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