Reuters: scientists in the United States say they have found a new treatment for chronic diseases, using the eggs of a parasite that infects pigs to treat people with diseases such as Crohn's disease (a chronic inflammatory bowel disease) and rheumatism.
Patients take the first medicine of its kind designed to treat autoimmune diseases. Each dose consists of thousands of parasite eggs taken from pig faeces, suspended in a spoonful of saline and swallowed.
The whipworm eggs hatch and grow into adult worms without harming their animal host. In humans the worms seem to live no more than two weeks, but that is long enough to prompt the immune system to stop attacking the body.
Two drug companies are looking at launching the treatment on the European market in 2016 or 2017: Dr. Falk Pharma GmbH of Germany and Coronado, a small American company worth no more than 137 million dollars, with one other drug, for cancer.
Market studies expect the autoimmune drug market to reach 34 billion dollars in 2016. In the United States, 700,000 people have Crohn's disease (of the colon and intestines), 50 million have rheumatism (of the joints) and 7.5 million have psoriasis (a skin disease), all autoimmune diseases in which the body attacks and damages its own tissues.
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