Hookworm Therapy As Treatment for Crohn’s Disease
CBS5 TV: Eating worms. It’s the stuff of legends.
In the classic movie How to Eat Fried Worms, Billy accepts a dare to eat ten worms in the course of one day. And each worm is prepared in such a disgusting manner, that kids watching each successive munch should be totally grossed out.
However, in real life, an experimental therapy involving helminthes or hookworms is not grossing out very sick patients and their families. They’re not trying these creatures as a dare, but as an attempt to improve their health in the face of life-threatening diseases.
Musician Scott Richards and artist Debora Wade are two Bay Area patients on the hookworm treatment. Richards and Wade both suffer from an inflammatory bowel disease called Crohn’s. When faced with using a parasite as therapy, both patients felt they had nothing to lose.
For starters, Crohn’s is an excruciatingly painful immune system disorder that causes the intestines to swell and empty frequently. Some believe the body’s immune system is overreacting to food and bacteria that would normally be found in the intestines.
