Thanks Lyon. We have spawned a
sister site for inflammatory bowel disease (Still in very early stages), so I am savvy to the comings and goings of research in that field.
One thing I remember reading is that the worms are often not seen in the stool, which means they aren't even necessarily "hatching"... it might simply be exposure to the DNA profile of the worm egg that gets the immune system revved up. Which makes the molecular mimicry they're trying to achieve very sensical.
There's another relevant and very recent study here, which I believe may hold some very golden keys to all of these related illnesses:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medical ... wsid=46860
"In a study involving 38 patients with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, the two common forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and 43 healthy controls, Assoc Prof Fazekas and colleagues found that healthy individuals have up to twice the number of disease-fighting regulatory T cells compared with IBD patients at the onset of disease.
"It is important to have more regulatory T cells, especially when you are young, as individuals with a deficiency are more susceptible to disease and frequency of disease is higher in the young," says Assoc Prof Fazekas.
"Our results also indicate that the activity of these cells is increased in IBD patients during the later stages of disease in an attempt to fight it."
Doesn't this sound familiar to at least one of the major theories of MS? Initial infection by a pathogen/environmental toxin on a immune-compromised individual (as versus controls), followed by a disproportionate and devastating counterattack with collateral damage.
Call me naive, but I believe the medical community as a whole is SO close to putting this puzzle together...