CNN iReport

Parasite therapy to treat allergies, asthma, colitis, Crohn's disease, psoriasis and more is causing a stir and the FDA is currently conducting clinical studies in several major cities.

I love to hear about alternative therapies that show promise and I haven't been so excited since I cured my stomach ulcer after seeing a program back in the 90's on CBC's "The Nature of Things" that showcased an Australian researcher who discovered that most stomach ulcers are caused by a bacterium called H pylori. I went straight to my doctor and asked for the recommended treatment and within days, my ulcer was gone.

When I saw an article this morning about how some people are treating immune disorders with parasites, I perked up. I don't suffer from allergies or inflammatory bowel disease, but if I did, I'd do whatever I could to contract hookworm and test the therapy for myself.

British researcher David Pritchard has spent decades studying  why some of the world's populations where hookworm is common have virtually no hay fever, allergies and asthma.

From an article from ABC news:

"Serious researchers at Tufts University in Boston, Cambridge University and others have explored the idea that humans evolved by building an immune system that was in an arms race of sorts with parasites.

The hypothesis goes that until recently, humans were fighting off some sort of parasite or another for millions of years, ever since humans evolved into humans. That co-existence eventually led humans to evolving an immune system that worked with parasites.

But in the last 150 years, the industrialized world's clean food supply and plumbing suddenly removed parasites from people's bodies. In response, researchers now widely think that people's immune systems stopped developing properly."

for the entire article:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AllergiesNews/Story?id=8114307&page=2