Ten minutes after gauze is applied to his arm, Christian Williams feels an unusual pinching sensation.
“I didn’t feel them again for another month or so,” Williams says.
The “them” he’s referring to are hookworms trapped under the gauze, and the mild rash he is left with marks the beginning of an epic journey for the 30 larvae the Malaghan Institute has infected him with.
One school of thought is that there might be an infection sweet-spot, where just the right number of hookworms hanging out in your small intestine, cruising for sex and sucking your blood, might be an infection with benefits for both host and hookworms. Hit this balance and the relationship might be more symbiotic than parasitic.
It’s not mentioned in the article, but I believe this study is being carried out in NZ because it’s run by the Malaghan Institute, based in Wellington.
That is really cool.
We play host to innumerable bacteria and viruses; most of them either either neutral or even good for us. It stands to reason that there are other organisms that would benefit us.
I wouldn’t say that hookworms would be beneficial and moreso that we evolved around them. It’s kind of like a husky dogs furcoat and how it evolved to withstand the cold (Hookworms) but without the cold they overheat (allergies).
I think that it is more a matter of perspective at that point.
If we evolve expecting hookworms to be present; your immune system is not “complete” without them. Thus hookworms live in some form of middle ground between parasite and symbiote.
This reminds me of a story I read a while back about someone who got very sick; because usually beneficial skin bacteria got into an internal organ. When on your skin the relationship is symbiotic but when it got into (the kidney IIRC) it was parasitic.
Do you have a reliable source showing they overheat? I thought it would act like insulation. Insulation that works for cold should work for heat, and I thought dogs mostly vent heat through panting anyway unlike us that vent heat through evaporating sweat