COMMENTARY

Crohn's disease

Will worms really cure Crohn’s disease?

G L Radford-Smith

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr G Radford-Smith
Department of Gastroenterology, Level 9A, Ned Hanlon Building, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, Herston 4029, Australia; graham_radford-smith@health.qld.gov.au

---

Treatment of Crohn’s disease patients with the intestinal helminth Trichuris suis appears safe and effective in the short term, even with concurrent immunosuppressive therapy

---

Keywords: Crohn’s disease; inflammatory bowel disease; helminths; Trichuris suis; Helicobacter

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

There are a wealth of data that support an immunoregulatory role for helminth infection in animal models and the human host.^1–3 Recently, this concept has been utilised therapeutically for the treatment of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Specifically, Summers and colleagues⁴ report the results of their open study of live Trichuris suis ova therapy in 29 patients with Crohn’s disease (CD) in this issue of Gut(see page 87).⁴ Treatment with T suis appears safe and effective in the short term, even with concurrent immunosuppressive therapy. Extension of this concept into the "hygiene hypothesis"⁵ may seem increasingly attractive in terms of an explanation for some epidemiological observations in patients with IBD, in particular the north-south gradient for IBD prevalence in both North America and Europe, and the lack of IBD in developing nations.^6–8 However, some of these epidemiological observations should be viewed with caution. Studies . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Trichuris suis therapy in Crohn’s disease

R W Summers, D E Elliott, J F Urban, Jr, R Thompson, and J V Weinstock
Gut 2005 54: 87-90. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Fumagalli, M., Pozzoli, U., Cagliani, R., Comi, G. P., Riva, S., Clerici, M., Bresolin, N., Sironi, M. (2009). Parasites represent a major selective force for interleukin genes and shape the genetic predisposition to autoimmune conditions. JEM 206: 1395-1408 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Watanabe, N., Takaoka, M., Sakurama, K., Tomono, Y., Hatakeyama, S., Ohmori, O., Motoki, T., Shirakawa, Y., Yamatsuji, T., Haisa, M., Matsuoka, J., Beer, D. G., Nagatsuka, H., Tanaka, N., Naomoto, Y. (2008). Dual Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor for Focal Adhesion Kinase and Insulin-like Growth Factor-I Receptor Exhibits Anticancer Effect in Esophageal Adenocarcinoma In vitro and In vivo. Clin. Cancer Res. 14: 4631-4639 [Abstract] [Full Text]