From: jascallaw <jascallaw@...>
Subject: [helminthictherapy] Re: Viral Infection on TSO
To: helminthictherapy@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, November 2, 2009, 5:02 PM

 

I would be cautious in saying that this is a virus, there is no evidence that it is. In fact if you son was tested for various flu's and he was negative why then assume he has a virus?

You have just deliberately infected your child with a helminth, fever and malaise is one of the common responses, your son's condition could just be an evolution in his response to the TSO itself.

But most likely it is just a coincidental infection your son picked up. TSO, and all these other helminths don't make one particularly vulnerable. Otherwise all those people living in Africa and Asia riddled with worms of various species would be dropping dead at a significantly higher rate than their unparasitized brethren, and that is not in the literature at all.

There is a strong tendency in those we provide helminthic therapy to, to ascribe every tic, and cough and rash to helminthic therapy.

I would be cautious drawing any conclusions, temporal coincidence means nothing with respect to causality, and this is the season when children are suddenly confined to school rooms and indoors a lot again.

Every year at this time, I have a lot of kids, my family gets sick repeatedly. Like your son I was, and still am, the last to get sick and rarely succumb even when my family are all falling over like ninepins. And this while hosting both 100 human hookworm and 200-400 human whipworm.

As to the action of TSO it is adapted to manipulate the pig immune system (trichuris suis ova = TSO), not the human immune system. This is why it dies off so quickly and why such frequent dosing is required. It is not very good at manipulating the human immune system so the human immune system kills it all, and quickly.

Knowing that it is therefore also true that any immune modulation due to TSO at all is going to be significantly less than from a human parasite. I have long believed that TSO is effective just because it presents the body with a benign infectious agent that the immune system can beat up, in substitute for self-tissues affected by autoimmunity

The idea is that of giving the immune system an "appropriate" target to distract it from attacking self tissues.

Add to that that your son has only been on TSO for a few weeks, typically far less than that required to produce a strong result, and I find it vanishingly unlikely that he is experiencing anything more than either an entirely coincidental infection (that could be viral or bacterial), or an immune response to the TSO that will moderate naturally very quickly.

Jasper

> > My question is :
> > Is this an underlying virus that is coming to surface and NOW the immune system is 'seeing' it thanks to TSO's immune modulation and it's a good thing, OR
> > Is this an underlying virus (or recently caught) getting worse due to the helminthic therapy ? I am assuming due to not so high dose of TSO, it's not causing a total immune suppression but more like immune modulation.
> >  
> > Any thoughts or suggestions would be HIGHLY appreciated.
> >  
> > Thanks SO much
> > Jay
> >
> >
> >
> >  
> >
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