The helminth connection

摘要

Another, perhaps unlikely, source of protection against allergies might come from parasites. Many parasitic diseases that persist in developing countries, such as filariasis and schistosomiasis, have been almost eradicated in developed countries. While commendable from a public health standpoint, a perverse effect of this eradication might be a loss of protection from allergy. Parasitic worms, or helminths, were implicated in providing protection against allergies even before the hygiene hypothesis was proposed, says Maria Yazdanbakhsh at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.