Parasites and hot tubs probably treat the autism symptoms

December 14, 2013  10:58

A new study has revealed that two unusual therapies may help treat symptoms in individuals with autism.

One involves using hot tubs to raise body temperature – and the other involves the ingesting of parasitic worms.

The lead author Dr. Eric Hollander, a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, told FoxNews.com. “There’s a hypothesis called the hygiene hypothesis, which claims that as people move from rural to urban areas, some of the gut flora that are present in rural areas are not present in urban areas, and that might be associated with some immune inflammatory illness.”

This theory is supported by the fact that about a third of autistic individuals show clinical improvement when they have a fever. In response to high body temperature, the immune system may release protective anti-inflammatory signals in the body, which may explain the effect on autism symptoms.

To test this idea, Hollander and his team tried to mimic a fever by placing children with autism in hot baths – one set at 98 degrees Fahrenheit and one set at 102 degrees Fahrenheit. 

“When they were at 102 degrees for half hour, there was an improvement in autism symptoms ,” Hollander said.  

In the second part of the study, the researchers examined the effects of treating 10 high-functioning autistic adults with Trichuris suis ova (TSO) – the eggs of the worm helminth trichura (whip worm).  The helminth worm is a known parasite of pigs but not one of humans, so it doesn’t reproduce or cause illness in the human gastrointestinal tract.  However, research has shown that worms learn to survive in humans by dampening the body’s inflammatory responses.

“What we found was when they were on the worm, there was an improvement in three difrent scales,” Hollander said.  

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