Can the Study of Helminths Be Fruitful for Human Diseases?
Parasitic helminths have an inclination to be long-lived invaders with certain human parasites reported as surviving for in excess of a decade. Such longevity tends to be associated with an apparent lack of pathology and one contributor to this perhaps so
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Can the Study of Helminths Be Fruitful for Human Diseases? Justyna Rzepecka and William Harnett
Abstract Parasitic helminths have an inclination to be long-lived invaders with certain human parasites reported as surviving for in excess of a decade. Such longevity tends to be associated with an apparent lack of pathology and one contributor to this perhaps somewhat surprising situation is likely to be the secretion of anti-inflammatory immunomodulators by the worms. Such molecules act to dampen and effect the polarization of immune responses and this invariably potent immunomodulation frequently extends to responses to third party antigens, vaccines and other diseases. Relating to the latter, a particularly serendipitous consequence of worm infection that is being increasingly recognized, is its effect on human conditions that are associated with aberrant inflammation. For this reason, helminths have within the last decade attracted substantial attention in the research community as a potential source of novel therapies against allergic and autoimmune diseases. In this article we describe the effects of helminths on five such diseases— asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, type I diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease. In particular, we consider the immunological mechanisms that underlie helminth-mediated protection against these diseases and in addition, highlight individual helminth molecules that may have therapeutic potential.
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Introduction
Parasitic helminths such as nematodes, tapeworms, and flukes are large, multicellular invaders that are generally very well adapted to their hosts. One of the consequences of such adaptation was the development of a very particular immunological environment that provides a range of benefits to the hosts. This is manifested by an apparent lack of pathology in most humans infected with J. Rzepecka • W. Harnett (*) Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G4 0RE, UK e-mail: [email protected] F. Bruschi (ed.), Helminth Infections and their Impact on Global Public Health, DOI 10.1007/978-3-7091-1782-8_16, © Springer-Verlag Wien 2014
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helminths (Hayes et al. 2004) and, more importantly from the point of view of this article, dampened down immune responses to third-party antigens such as allergens and autoantigens (Elliott and Weinstock 2012). Due to this development, helminths have attracted a substantial attention in the research community as a potential source of novel therapies against diseases associated with aberrant immune/inflammatory responses, e.g., allergies and autoimmune diseases (Harnett and Harnett 2010). Further support for this idea is provided by epidemiological data in which researchers surveyed human cohorts exposed to helminths to determine if protection against inflammatory disorders could be found. Indeed, observational studies of natural helminth infections in patients with multiple sclerosis that spanned over almost 5 years revealed a remarka
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