allergies

[ferret]

with the recent threads on asthma and other allergies it reminded me of a trial I nearly did 3 or 4 years ago,

basically it all started after a short series of about 5 or 6 programs on TV about parasites that live in humans,
one program talked about hay fever and asthma and how cases had increased in the western world as living standards had increased and compared it to parts of south america where there had been a worming program carried out over a number of years and allergies had increased in the areas where the program was in place compared to other areas where there was no program,

anyhow a while later there was something mentioned on radio about a trial being done at a hospital in Nottingham
where the volunteers would be split in to 2 groups, 1 group would be infected with hook worm and the other group would have a placebo, I was accepted on to the trial but after talking to the doctor we decided the traveling would have been a bit much as it meant going up there 2 or 3 times a week, any way I've often wondered what the outcome was, would be interesting to know.

[Pippa]

Sounds like this trial

In which case:

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.

Source

[ferret]

yeahbut,  other people said that 10 worms are not enough the number needs to be something like 50 and the trial was too short, so by the time the worms had developed enough, to have an effect they were removed from the body, I did post a link in one of the other threads on hay fever but as usual with stuff like this 6 say it will work and half a dozen say it won't, but it's interesting stuff