Helminthic therapy and Parkinson's disease
There are three major independent lines of evidence suggesting that helminthic therapy may be effective in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.
1. The role of the gut-brain connection in Parkinson’s disease is well-known and widely accepted.
2. There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that helminths will halt the progression of Parkinson’s and even reverse many of its effects.
While anecdotes are not widely accepted as strong evidence in modern medicine, it would seem reasonable to invoke the “parachute paradigm” on this issue: if, like a pilot who jumps from an aeroplane and deploys a parachute, the patient is rescued from an otherwise certain fate, and if the mechanism makes perfect sense, then the anecdote should surely be taken seriously.
3. The authors of research published in Nature, in June 2017, concluded that Parkinson’s disease is related to autoimmunity.
That there is a relationship between the disease and autoimmunity has been known for several years, but scientists have been slow to embrace the idea.
A study reported in 2018 showed that the use of immunosuppressant drugs may keep Parkinson's disease at bay, and may also slow progression of the disease if it develops.
Helminths can achieve similar beneficial effects to immunosuppressants without the longterm adverse side effects, and they are well known to be extremely effective in the treatment of a range of autoimmune conditions. Therefore, it can be concluded that helminths may also prevent and treat Parkinson’s disease, as suggested by the following two reports.
NB. After the discovery in, 2017, that a molecule in the anthelmintic drug, niclosamide, might be able to protect against Parkinson’s disease-related neuronal damage, [2] it is possible that patients with this disease may be offered treatment with niclosamide.
Since this drug specifically targets tapeworms, in which it inhibits glucose uptake, oxidative phosphorylation and anaerobic metabolism, any patient taking niclosamide might not benefit from helminthic therapy using the rat tapeworm, Hymenolepis diminuta (HDC).