A Cure for Allergies That Crawls Under My Skin
In today’s New York Times — there is an article about a scientist who is recruiting clinical trial patients for an experimental treatment for curing allergies and asthma. I’m always interested in possible cures for allergies and asthma — but this is one trial I’m not rushing to sign up for. How does it work?
A dressing crawling with pin-size hookworm larvae is applied to the arm for several days to make sure that the squirming freeloaders infiltrate the patient’s system. Huh? What does that have to do with allergies? According to the scientist behind the study, Dr. Pritchard (immunologist-biologist at the University of Nottingham), an allergic reaction is triggered when the worms infiltrate the patient’s skin. Pritchard asserts that “the worms have found a way of switching off the immune system in order to survive. That’s why infected people have fewer allergic symptoms.” Initial tests of his theory have been positive.
(T)he National Health Services ethics committee let him conduct a study in 2006 with 30 participants, 15 of whom received 10 hookworms each. Tests showed that after six weeks, the T-cells of the 15 worm recipients began to produce lower levels of chemicals associated with inflammatory response, indicating that their immune systems were more suppressed than those of the 15 placebo recipients. Despite playing host to small numbers of parasites, worm recipients reported little discomfort. Trial participants raved about their allergy symptoms disappearing …Some allergy sufferers cannot wait (for a larger-scale version of the initial trial). The moderator of the Yahoo group, Jasper Lawrence, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has started a clinic in Mexico, to offer the unproven therapy (a basic worm “inoculation” costs $3,900).
Even if this is the safest, most successful treatment on the planet — can you imagine telling an allergic child that you are going to put crawling worms all over their skin? And doing it? I have gone to great lengths to tell my child that having allergies is not her fault — nothing that she is being punished for. This cure seems contrary to my teachings. Seems like more of a CBS Survivor Challenge than a medical cure. I’m not even sure that this trial applies to food allergies or to kids. Even if it does and it goes mainstream — we’ll be running the other way. And fast. And with my luck, my kid’s allergic to worms too.