[go_prodev]

The article paints hookworms as disease causing parasites, responsible for the poor health and economic circumstances in the South.

But this year hookworms were involved in a clinical trial on type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease with positive results, so maybe the south were onto something.

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/diabetes-study-suc...

[sandworm101]

There have been many such studies using hookworms to investigate whether aspects of out physiology can benefit from parasites, whether our bodies have evolved to expect them to the point that living without is unnatural. BUT, my understanding is that these studies have always used only male or only female worms. The patient is "infected" with a very limited number and they will all eventually die. That is very different than being infested with a colony's worth of worms. And, most importantly, any released eggs will not ever go on to infect other people.

These worms are also easily eradicated from the body if needed. Ivermectin cannot kill covid, but it murders worms very well.

[AbrahamParangi]

Aside but my favorite ivermectin study was the meta study that found that there was a relationship between whether or not ivermectin improved Covid outcomes and the rates of endemic parasites that could be treated with ivermectin.

So, people who got the dewormer did better - but only in those places where people had a lot of parasitic worms. The obvious implication being they did better because they had a parasitic worm infection which was incidentally treated with ivermectin.

[delecti]

There was also an in vitro study that showed ivermectin killed SARS-CoV-2 viral particles. Of course the conspiracy theorists left out dose information, which would be so high that it would just kill you outright.

So the truth behind the two halves of the ivermectin conspiracy were basically: if you have parasites, getting rid of them will help your COVID prognosis; and if you don't mind being dead first, we can prevent COVID from killing you.

[1udfx9cf8azi0]

The study did not show that Ivermectin killed SARS-CoV-2 viral particles. Prior to the pandemic, Ivermectin was known to act as an broad anti-viral. This is due to Ivermectin being a protease inhibitor, i.e. it blocks an enzyme from acting. It's important to note that this is the mechanism through which approved anti-virals for SARS-CoV-2, such as Paxlovid, operate.

[galangalalgol]

There are also some studies indicating that it can shrink certain tumors. My assumption was that it just stirred up the immune system in general, un thevsame way that a flu shot can decrease the severity of a cold.

[autoexec]

I see a few in vitro studies are out there, It'd help if we knew which ones were being talked about specifically.

[brutusborn]

It would be nice if every comment was fully cited, but would probably be counter-productive since most people don’t have the time to find citations.

Until everyone’s knowledge is represented in some kind of knowledge graph, simply finding a citation “of that paper I read last year” can be a lot of work. So for now, it’s more effective to talk generally and cite a paper when it is relevant (when discussing methods etc).

[ramraj07]

I don’t know if you’ve done an in vitro study before, but I have. I can make anything kill anything in Petri dish. Heck I can make anything kill anything even in a mouse. If ANYONE can figure out how to reliably correlate preclinical studies (that’s the technical term for any study not done in humans) to human outcomes, they’d be a literal trillionaire in a decade. But that’s not possible yet.

Ivermectin did not work. It never did. People in the initial waves off were dying of Covid because their own immune system killed their lung. Ivermectin did jackshit about it. Multiple clinical trials proved that. So it’s time to hang that hat and find the next favorite conspiracy theory.

[alphager]

Obligatory zkcd: https://xkcd.com/1217/

[rvba]

During covid you would often read that medicine X or Y would work on some people or in some country.

I always wonder if those didnt work because people often have more than one infection ongoing. And obviously two or more infections are more deadly, since your organism is fighting not only coronavirus but something else as well. So I wondered if the medicines didnt defend against that something else.

Dewormer in USA, some anti flu medicine in Italy and other in Poland...

[go_prodev]

Ah that makes more sense. I recall one of the studies saying that the worms couldn't reproduce, whereas the article on HN mentions millions of eggs causing an infestation.

[sandworm101]

If anyone is interested in controlling parasites by playing with their reproduction, consider the "screwworm fence" down in Panama. Irradiated male screwworm flies are bred and released en masse, to mate with wild females to produce nonviable offspring and thereby halt the species spreading further north. It works so well that few have heard about it.

[notatoad]

i'm curious how much overlap there is between the benefits of parasitic worms, and the benefits of severely calorie-reduced diets