A California man faced with the removal of his colon to treat his ulcerative colitis has flown to Thailand to swallow parasitic worm eggs to combat the illness.
The 36-year-old year old man suffered a form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that destroys the bowel's cells and causes ulcers to form on the tissue.
Uneasy about having the operation, he opted for the unconventional treatment of ingesting worms, MyHealthNewsDaily.com reported.
Faced with the possibility of having his bowel removed or swallowing worms that may alleviate the symptoms of his colitis, he took the parasitologist's advice and swallowed 1500 parasitic worm eggs.
Not long after stomaching the crawly creatures, his painful ulcerative colitis symptoms were relieved and he no longer needed treatment, according to the case study, which was published yesterday in the December issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Lead researcher Mara Broadhurst, a doctoral student in immunology at the University of California, San Francisco said the treatment should be met with caution.
She suggested the man's immune system may have kicked in and tried to get rid of the parasitic worms, which in turn created a thick mucus lining along his intestinal walls and alleviated the symptoms of ulcerative colitis.
Broadhurst added that the worm treatment is far from being proven effective or even harmless for everyone.
Four year later the man's IBD systems returned because the worm's lifespan was over, so he gulped another 2000 eggs.
"There was good evidence the patient improved not just during a natural change in the course of his disease," Broadhurst said. "As the worms reached the end of their lifespan, the inflammation came back and we had the benefit of seeing a second round of the same phenomenon."
Related video: Salma Hayek: "I eat bugs!"
Home