Thousands of worm eggs in a glass of a sports drink could provide relief from bowel disease symptoms, MSU and University of Iowa researchers say.
Linda Mansifeld, a professor of microbiology, is leading a study on how whipworms can be used to treat inflammatory bowel disease.
Whipworms are thread-thin parasite worms, about an inch long when full-grown, that burrow their heads into the walls of the large intestines. Inflammatory bowel disease refers to two diseases — Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis — that cause chronic diarrhea and life-threatening infections.
The source of these diseases is unknown, but one theory is that they are caused by a glitch in the immune system, Mansfield said.
"Diarrhea is an immune response to get rid of bad bacteria from our system," Mansfield said. "People with (the diseases) might have an immune system that is out of control.
"This causes them to continuously have diarrhea even when there is nothing to flush out. It is possible that whipworms play a role in normalizing immune responses of the human body."
The MSU researchers received a $500,000 grant on Thursday from the National Institutes of Health to fund the study for the next five years. The researchers are attempting to isolate which parts of the whipworm are most effective in treating the diseases.
Two studies investigating the effectiveness of whipworm treatment have been conducted by Robert Summers, a professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Iowa.
Summers studied whether or not a concoction of Gatorade and 2,500 whipworm eggs, taken every two weeks for 12 weeks, can alleviate bowel inflammation among volunteer patients with moderate to severe Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
"In both studies, a significant number of patients showed improvement or lost almost all of the symptoms," he said. "We do not claim that whipworm treatment is a cure. What our studies show is that it seems to relieve the symptoms."
Summers said the whipworm variety used for the studies naturally lives in the intestines of a pig and added that the worms live in the human body only for a few weeks or months. The dead worms are then passed as waste.
"The remarkable part about these studies is that we were not able to detect any side effects," he said.
According to both Mansfield and Summers, the motivation to study whipworms comes from the large number of patients nationwide suffering from the digestive diseases. About 1.4 million Americans suffer from them based on estimates by the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America, a group that promotes education and research about digestive diseases.
"(It's) not just an episode of diarrhea that doesn't go away," said Vincent Young, an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, who routinely treats patients with the diseases.
"For people with (the diseases), the infections can eat through the intestine walls and spread to the surrounding area, like the bladder, kidney, vaginal cavity and skin. I have seen many patients who can't work and can't do anything because they are in constant pain."
The continuous suffering makes patients with the diseases open to alternative treatments, said Summers.
"These people have lost their lives. It may sound outrageous to give someone a worm to cure an intestinal disease," Mansfield said. "But these people have tried many other treatments that have not worked and if this helps them, then giving them worms is reasonable."
None of the patients in the University of Iowa studies objected to the treatment once it was explained to them that the worm eggs are only visible under a microscope and they will not see the worms in their stool, Summers said. Mansfield acknowledges that this field of research is still quite controversial.
"It defies common sense. We wash our hands, keep our shoes on, pave our roads and treat parasites with drugs," Mansfield said. "Now, all of a sudden it may be that worms are beneficial in treating some digestive disorders."
