Dr. Weinstock believes that helminths and human hosts evolved to the benefit of both over millennia. Petrified human stool many thousands of years old has been found to contain helminth eggs, and autopsies of mummies have found traces of helminths. The frozen iceman Ötzi, found in the northern Italian Alps in 1991 where he had lain buried in a glacier since 3300 B.C., had T. trichiura in his gut.
“We are teeming with life, and we really are part of the environment. When we try to separate ourselves from the environment and exposures to these organisms, we leave ourselves predisposed to disease,” he said.
Dr. Weinstock is not advocating a return to 19th-century hygiene. Rather, he and others are working to characterize more fully the interaction of helminths with the immune system and to identify factors responsible for the beneficial exposures so they can be reintroduced at an appropriate time early in life, when the immune system is developing.
Clinical studies in IBD, asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis, and multiple sclerosis are underway and more are planned, and one helminth-derived medication, ASP1002, is under review by the Food and Drug Administration and the European drug monitoring authorities.
Dr. Francois-Xavier Frapaise, CEO of Asphelia Pharmaceuticals Inc., confirmed that his company is about to file an Investigational New Drug application for ASP1002 in Crohn's disease. They also are planning trials in various other conditions including lupus and multiple sclerosis. “RA would also be interesting to investigate,” he said.
“There has been a revolution in our thinking,” Dr. Weinstock said. “We have learned that we are not insulated from the world around us.”
Helminths, like this whipworm, could be the next big thing in multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases. Courtesy Dr. Joel V. Weinstock