scorpion wrote:
I am anxiously awaiting the MS trials that have taken this approach!
Same here, especially since several factors are against noticing good results. If John is finding good results, you could say it's against great odds.
1. It's not comfortable to think about but, if the loss of parasite exposure did lead to immune dysfunction in developed populations, this might be a situation in which the "cure" might not be as easy as eliminating or reversing the "cause" because both the hygiene hypothesis research AND MS migration data could be seen as showing that
pre-pubescent exposure to "evolutionary normal" conditions as being essential to avoiding an errant immune system in the first place.
In other words, maybe nature's way of handling MS before the industrial revolution/"development" was not to experience it in the first place via by exposure to normally experienced pathogens before the age of 14 or 15. After that the immune system might be considered to have matured in either an educated state through exposure.....or not (since our development)
After that point (adulthood) additional exposure to "evolutionary normal" conditions wouldn't be necessary to avoid disease OR helpful once the disease process has started. (?)
2. The most important factor(s) in this theory involves:
A.
The effects on the human immune system of the evolution-long relationship with the parasites which shouldn't be able to survive the human immune system, but somehow do survive comfortably.
B.
The effects on the parasites which have shared evolution with the human and evolved to control certain aspects of the human immune system in order to survive comfortably despite the purpose of the human immune system.
3. As mentioned above, with it in mind that the shared evolutionary history between parasite and the human host is essential for positive results, the University of Wisconsin clinical trial is using T suis, which is the swine whipworm which is detected and eliminated by our immune system in a few weeks, as opposed to the T trichiura, the human whipworm, which evolved to control aspects of the human immune system so well that they die of old age despite our immune system.
If U of W clinical trials show positive results with T suis against MS in adults with MS in the few weeks (cycles) before the immune system detects and eliminates it, that's pretty impressive.
I also consider it pretty impressive and astronomically beyond the realm of coincidence that the same chemical which shields human placenta also shields human parasites from the immune system
http://tinyurl.com/ycx8gyq To understand the significance of that you have to share the long standing question I've had regarding how long is the co-evolution between humans and the human adapted parasites?
Realistically, a parasite can't just "hop into" a host with an unfamiliar immune system and survive a life cycle....necessary for the continued survival of it's kind in that host.
What is certain is that parasites were around LONG, LONG before the human and even before the most rudimentary predecessor of the human. Impossible to prove at this point, but likely nonetheless, is that the immune system-less predecessor of the human was parasitized and that, as the pre-human evolved the immune system, the parasites were able to evolve their survival mechanisms at the necessary rate.
It's beyond my understanding at this point but somehow during that process it's statistically necessary that the placenta and the parasites evolved to share the same method of immune modulation, whether synonymously or mimicry would be hideously interesting to know.
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