While discussing whipworms in class, both pig and human, I realized that I had no idea just how someone acquired such a squirmy friend. I did a little research and found this diagram, specific to the human, which shows just how you and Mr. Trichuris Trichiura become so close.
http://img.medscape.com/pi/emed/ckb/emergency_medicine/756148-780913-788570-1678898.jpg
Fun Facts:
- They can grow up to 2 inches long while hanging out in the lumen of your intestine or colon!
- Females tend to lay about 20,000 eggs per day!
- This parasite is carried by about 1/4 of our world's population!
- Boys, when children, are much more apt to become a host than young girls due to "more soil and dirt consumption"...looks like my hypothetical children won't be playing in the sand box.
The article as a whole contains a great deal of interesting information. Here is the link if you feel like checking it out!
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/788570-overview
Have a great spring break everyone!!
-Heidi
I don't remember talking about an average age of onset for IBD, but I've known plenty of people our age with either ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease, so I'm assuming it may progress in severity with age, but there is still a significant segment of patients who fall in the pediatric category. For kids with IBD, would the whipworm treatment be reasonable or are they less able to mount an immune response that will effectively repel the parasite and outweigh the Th1 inflammation of their IBD? If it is relatively safe to treat children who have IBD with whipworms, then if my child had IBD I would encourage them to hit up that sandbox even more, it might be more affordable than having a lab prepare whipworms in gatorade. ;)
ReplyDeleteWow those fun facts were incredibly enlightening. I had no idea how common whip worms were. However, it says that they are carried by 1/4 of our world's population, I'm curious what percent of that is from the U.S. or from 3rd world countries? I really don't think I'd ever feel comfortable encouraging my children to consume whip worms if they had IBD but who knows they may just end up eating one in the backyard. When I was young, I used to hide the worms that I found in the dirt from the birds because I felt like the birds had an unfair advantage, I wonder how many whip worms I came in contact with during my youth?
ReplyDeleteAlthough I cringe at the thought of whipworms or any other nematode for that matter I did enjoy these fun facts and also found a few more I thought I would share with everyone.
ReplyDeleteThe human whipworm is the Trichuris Trichiura.
Trichuris Trichiura was first discovered by an Italian scientist of the name of Morgani in 1740.
Whipworm infection is rarely fatal.
The name whipworm comes from the shape of the worm front is thin and the back end is fat and resembles the handle of a whip.
Females are larger than males
Trichuris eggs have been found in the fossilized feces of stone age humans from 10,000 years ago.
Also to Danielle I read that whipworm is rare in the United States, but is most common in the rural Southeast affecting ~2 million people.
I'm still wondering what happens when people with IBD are treated with whipworms, beyond the clinical picture of IBD. That is, what are those patients supposed to do about the symptoms associated with the parasitic infection itself?? I realize that infection is rarely fatal (phew), but what happens when patients experience things like diarrhea or abdominal pain? How long do they have to deal with the infection? Because these still sound like IBD symptoms to me, just with a different culprit! I suppose that's when issues with treatment compliance arise...
ReplyDeleteThose are some really interesting facts! I never knew that there was such high prevalence of people carrying parasites. Go along with the other comments, the reason it is believed why people in less develop countries, which have higher prevalence of whipworm seem to be protected from IBD, while in the US, whipworm is rare and IBD is more common is because of the IBD hygiene hypothesis. Since whipworms have been evolving over 100 million years to live in the intestinal track and other locations of their host, the IBD hygiene hypothesis suggests that raising children in extremely hygienic environments negatively affects immune development, which predisposes them to immunologic disease like IBD later in life.
ReplyDeleteAlso to Julia, since people with IBD are usually treated with pig whipworm and because they haven’t evolved to live parasitically in humans, they only live in the gut for a short time. So from what I read so far there are usually not any detectable adverse effects from ingestion of pig whipworm ova and most symptoms are reversible after deworming.
Sources:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ibd.20633/full
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/462153
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/462153