A Hygiene HypothesisTheory about LADA

[McCamy Taylor]

Someone asked me to repost this here. I am interested in the topic of HLA mediated autoimmune diseases being the result of the absence of parasitic infections to which our ancestors were routinely exposed. In the UK they are conducting trials using hookworm infections in patients with MS to see if the auto-antibodies can be distracted. The theory evolved because of observations that people who grew up in the old south rarely got MS while those who grow up in the new south are just as likely as those who grow up in the north to contract MS. In the old south, hookworm infections were common in childhood due to the habit of running around barefoot outdoors.

I recently speculated that Latent autoimmune diabetes of adults in which adults start out looking like Type 2 but eventually end up requiring insulin could also be an HLA mediated autoimmune condition brought on by the lack of a particular parasitic infection, because there are no cases of the disease in Papua, New Guinea but a fairly consistent rate of the disease in other countries. What if there is a parasite that is still common in New Guinea that has been eradicated in other countries? Here is the link to the original OP:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/114215052

I am beginning to suspect that the culprit might be trichinella, the round worms that you get from poorly cooked pork but also from bear meat, wild game and crocodiles. Trichinella is extremely common in Papua, New Guinea.

http://www.ajtmh.org/content/65/5/553.full.pdf

Here is some general info on trichinella

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/787591-overview

Obviously, infection would be more common if you hunt wild game, especially if you eat freshly caught wild game before it has been properly cooked, the way that the hunters in Papua, New Guinea do. This raises the possibility that when hunter-gatherer groups like Plains Native Americans were forced onto reservations and switched to a diet low in freshly hunted game, perhaps they were inadvertently deprived of trichinella infections--- good thing, right? Unless the lack of a trichinella infection triggered some of them to then go on to develop LADA or the diabetes that plagues Native Americans.

Not saying we should eat raw bacon. But, maybe there is way to create a derivative of the proteins of round worms to see if it could prevent this type of diabetes.

Oh, and here is an interesting link about how worm "excretory products" successfully treated colitis in rats. Lots of links within the article to other articles about the hygiene hypothesis.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4008629/

[TexasProgresive]

1. I have been interested in the rise of auto-immune disorders in our time.

I remember a study done in the UK with Crohns disease where patients were "infected" with an internal parasite which does not normally infect humans and will die off in a couple of weeks. The study seem to show a decrease in the symptoms of Crohns. The theory is that our immune systems evolved to protect against parasites but with modern clean living the immune system has begun attacking what it is suppose to protect. It's kind of like a large standing army with no external enemies seeing enemies in those it is meant to protect.

I can't find that study but there is a company in Germany I believe called Ovamed that using this therapy. If you go to the link there is a Tab at the top labeled TSO which goes into more detail.

http://www.ovamed.de/tso/theory
Theory, Basic Science and Inventors

snip: Over the last decade several research teams have uncovered a possible explanation for the dramatic rise in autoimmune disease and allergy that has occurred in industrialized countries. Many diseases such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, insulin-dependent (Type 1) diabetes and asthma became much more prevalent during the last half of the twentieth century (1). The increase in prevalence for these diseases occurred in conjunction with increases in standard of living and hygienic conditions. These types of immune-mediated diseases remain rare in less developed tropical countries. It is clear that a change in our environment has promoted development of immune-mediated disease. Many changes in our environment have occurred. One of the most significant, from an immunologic standpoint, is the eradication of exposure to helminthic parasites (2). These complex organisms have far-reaching effects on the immune system that could prevent development or inhibit expression of autoimmune disease (3).Basic studies using animal models of human disease have shown that exposure to helminths can prevent colitis (1, 4-7), autoimmune diabetes (8,9), and autoimmune encephalitis (10, 11). Recently, investigators at the University of Iowa have shown that exposure to intestinal worms can reverse established colitis in IL-10 deficient mice (12). These studies suggest that exposure to helminths may be able to prevent or treat human disease.