[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.

[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.

[notatoad]

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