Parasites used to be ubiquitous before we had medication to kill them. There's even a (not very well supported) theory that these parasites helped with allergies by moderating immune system. They releasing chemicals to lower immune activity in order to protect themselves, so the idea that we had these for thousands of years and basically are made to have them is intriguing. It's called "helminthic therapy" and it's considered alternative medicine but there is some academic interest. Results in clinical trials have been mixed. Perhaps the future is just synthetic hookworm proteins that regulate your immune system as our ancestors once had.
My partner researches one parasite named in this study (a type of whipworm) and they actually get their eggs for in vitro work from another researcher abroad who infected himself with the parasite because he finds it helps with his autoimmune disease. He harvests the eggs and distributes them to other teams.
Scientists that study mosquitoes in a lab will commonly feed the mosquitoes with their own blood. Literally sticking their arm in and letting them feed.
That makes sense because to an extent the immune system can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Immune cells often get polarized to either type 1 (viruses, cancer, autoimmunity) or type 2 (parasites, worms, toxins) immune responses but not both. So he’s effectively distracting his immune system.
Intuitively it wouldn’t be surprising that there’s some symbiosis going on somewhere and that there would be beneficial parasites. In reality I have no idea.
There is a significantly more mainstream but similar-in-the-broad-strokes theory, the Hygiene Hypothesis, which says that the immune system relies on encountering things like this for calibration, but doesn't require them as a continual presence for optimal functioning.
I would argue that parasites only became ubiquitous when we abandoned our hunter gatherers way of life and settled into agricultural communities of larger scale (something relatively recent when compared to human evolution).
So, I doubt that immune system theory, since for most of mankind’s existence, they were not part of our life.
Your argument is total nonsense. Parasites are ubiquitous in all animals, and plants, right now, today. When did they abandon their hunter-gatherer way of life?
> for most of mankind’s existence, [parasites] were not part of our life.
This is not something you should have been able to say with a straight face. It proves nothing other than that nobody should ever take you seriously.
TL;DR
Fecal matter from Vindolanda fort dated around 90 AD contains eggs of intestinal worms, and traces of antibodies to Giardia duodenalis.
Nothing of this is really news as not having parasitic worms is very recent development, and getting G. duodenalis with unsanitized water continues to be common today. Healthy immune system can deal with it, as it could in 90 AD, hence antibodies.
The story is an obvious attempt to produce as much words from as few facts as possible, and the headline is meaningless.
A very interesting read on this topic is Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer. Fascinating life cycles that involve parasites and sometime multiple hosts. It seems having parasites is the norm.
I live with amazing technology all around me, and I often take it for granted. But whenever I take mebendazol (against e.g. pinworm) I think about my ancestors, and how they just had to live with it!
Your ancestors probably had plant-based cures like garlic or walnut hulls for the same infections. Modern medicine improved on the spectrum of parasites that can be treated but there's still some caveman-level stuff that works reliably for some species.
b/c he lives someplace where people get parasites regularly? Also b/c it is cheaper and easier to treat for parasites (take a pill) than to test and then treat (visit a doctor, get a prescription, take a pill).
Many parasites are endemic to the southern USA. As a child I was checked for parasites every year. Most modern doctors I've met are negligent in this regard. Under questioning several have stated that it is unimportant. Some doctors assert incorrectly that blood tests would reveal any significant parasitic infestation. I always correct them but I also change doctors b/c medical school seems to "harden" the brain - nothing new can be learned once they have graduated.
Ever walk barefoot across the lawn?
Ever eat uncooked fish/flesh/sushi?
Ever own/pet a cat?
If so, you might want to get tested!8-))
Neglected Parasitic Infections: What Family Physicians Need to Know—A CDC Update:
Same with the viking coprolites found in Jorvik/York?
It would seem reasonable to say on a statistical sample of 1 we have no reason to believe this was common or uncommon, or do we say on the basis we found one, the assumption is that it was universal?
We know some things like floor rushes were picked to deter fleas, were there oral or rectal treatments which worked for worms?
I find that observation unsurprising. What would be more interesting is the relative incidence between outlying forts and interior urban centres. The article mentions a couple of papers on urban fecal matter, so maybe that answer is available. I can create hypothetical cases for either location to be higher or lower than the other.
> I can create hypothetical cases for either location to be higher or lower than the other.
- Transmission is easier in the city due to closer contact and more shared resources.
- Urban parasites are likely to be more debilitating to the victim because they may come from an unfamiliar environment. (Compare how hookworm in the American south was a nuisance to blacks, but debilitating to whites.)
We know that diseases were a much heavier burden in cities than they were in rural regions. Parasites are mostly just bigger diseases; you'd need to come up with a really interesting idea to explain why they were a smaller issue in cities than outside of them.
Hookworm is an interesting example to consider here; you catch them by stepping on soil with your bare feet. Stereotypically they are a problem of the rural south. But I found this paper on "neglected tropical diseases" in the United States, which had this to say:
> Toxocariasis is a soil-transmitted helminth infection [it isn't hookworm, but hookworm is also a soil-transmitted helminth infection] that can result in visceral larva migrans, visual impairment from ocular larval migrans, or a condition that resembles asthma, known as covert toxocariasis. Urban playgrounds in the US have recently been shown to be a particularly rich source of Toxocara eggs, and inner-city children are at high risk of acquiring the infection.
Another example to consider might be covid, where my read of the consensus is that (1) initial nature -> human infection is more likely in rural areas (where there's more nature), but (2) once it can live in humans, it's a bigger problem in urban areas (where there are more humans).
That makes me wonder if there might be exceptions. The Aztecs had a large system of latrines and they dumped the waste into the lake to create night soil to use for their chinampas gardens. I wonder if that exposed them to more parasites or if the large organized labor force dealing with waste made Tenochtitlan more hygienic.
Parasites used to be ubiquitous before we had medication to kill them. There's even a (not very well supported) theory that these parasites helped with allergies by moderating immune system. They releasing chemicals to lower immune activity in order to protect themselves, so the idea that we had these for thousands of years and basically are made to have them is intriguing. It's called "helminthic therapy" and it's considered alternative medicine but there is some academic interest. Results in clinical trials have been mixed. Perhaps the future is just synthetic hookworm proteins that regulate your immune system as our ancestors once had.
My partner researches one parasite named in this study (a type of whipworm) and they actually get their eggs for in vitro work from another researcher abroad who infected himself with the parasite because he finds it helps with his autoimmune disease. He harvests the eggs and distributes them to other teams.
Scientists that study mosquitoes in a lab will commonly feed the mosquitoes with their own blood. Literally sticking their arm in and letting them feed.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jun/23/mosqu...
That makes sense because to an extent the immune system can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Immune cells often get polarized to either type 1 (viruses, cancer, autoimmunity) or type 2 (parasites, worms, toxins) immune responses but not both. So he’s effectively distracting his immune system.
Intuitively it wouldn’t be surprising that there’s some symbiosis going on somewhere and that there would be beneficial parasites. In reality I have no idea.
Jaffa Kree?
2 replies →
Doesn't seem too off from gut micro biome theories.
There is a significantly more mainstream but similar-in-the-broad-strokes theory, the Hygiene Hypothesis, which says that the immune system relies on encountering things like this for calibration, but doesn't require them as a continual presence for optimal functioning.
The average body temperature then was also higher.
How could that be observed?
2 replies →
I would argue that parasites only became ubiquitous when we abandoned our hunter gatherers way of life and settled into agricultural communities of larger scale (something relatively recent when compared to human evolution).
So, I doubt that immune system theory, since for most of mankind’s existence, they were not part of our life.
Your argument is total nonsense. Parasites are ubiquitous in all animals, and plants, right now, today. When did they abandon their hunter-gatherer way of life?
> for most of mankind’s existence, [parasites] were not part of our life.
This is not something you should have been able to say with a straight face. It proves nothing other than that nobody should ever take you seriously.
TL;DR Fecal matter from Vindolanda fort dated around 90 AD contains eggs of intestinal worms, and traces of antibodies to Giardia duodenalis.
Nothing of this is really news as not having parasitic worms is very recent development, and getting G. duodenalis with unsanitized water continues to be common today. Healthy immune system can deal with it, as it could in 90 AD, hence antibodies.
The story is an obvious attempt to produce as much words from as few facts as possible, and the headline is meaningless.
A very interesting read on this topic is Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer. Fascinating life cycles that involve parasites and sometime multiple hosts. It seems having parasites is the norm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite_Rex
I live with amazing technology all around me, and I often take it for granted. But whenever I take mebendazol (against e.g. pinworm) I think about my ancestors, and how they just had to live with it!
Your ancestors probably had plant-based cures like garlic or walnut hulls for the same infections. Modern medicine improved on the spectrum of parasites that can be treated but there's still some caveman-level stuff that works reliably for some species.
Why are you taking anti-parasitics regularly?
b/c he lives someplace where people get parasites regularly? Also b/c it is cheaper and easier to treat for parasites (take a pill) than to test and then treat (visit a doctor, get a prescription, take a pill).
Many parasites are endemic to the southern USA. As a child I was checked for parasites every year. Most modern doctors I've met are negligent in this regard. Under questioning several have stated that it is unimportant. Some doctors assert incorrectly that blood tests would reveal any significant parasitic infestation. I always correct them but I also change doctors b/c medical school seems to "harden" the brain - nothing new can be learned once they have graduated.
Ever walk barefoot across the lawn?
Ever eat uncooked fish/flesh/sushi?
Ever own/pet a cat?
If so, you might want to get tested!8-))
Neglected Parasitic Infections: What Family Physicians Need to Know—A CDC Update:
https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2021/0900/p277.html
6 replies →
Not OP but one reason is having young kids that can’t help bringing home everything that is spreading in daycare/kindergarten
11 replies →
Same with the viking coprolites found in Jorvik/York?
It would seem reasonable to say on a statistical sample of 1 we have no reason to believe this was common or uncommon, or do we say on the basis we found one, the assumption is that it was universal?
We know some things like floor rushes were picked to deter fleas, were there oral or rectal treatments which worked for worms?
Prevalence by existence. A coarse but realistic heuristic for very small sample sizes.
Can we use the same argument for life among the stars?
Intelligence, even?
1 reply →
I find that observation unsurprising. What would be more interesting is the relative incidence between outlying forts and interior urban centres. The article mentions a couple of papers on urban fecal matter, so maybe that answer is available. I can create hypothetical cases for either location to be higher or lower than the other.
> I can create hypothetical cases for either location to be higher or lower than the other.
- Transmission is easier in the city due to closer contact and more shared resources.
- Urban parasites are likely to be more debilitating to the victim because they may come from an unfamiliar environment. (Compare how hookworm in the American south was a nuisance to blacks, but debilitating to whites.)
We know that diseases were a much heavier burden in cities than they were in rural regions. Parasites are mostly just bigger diseases; you'd need to come up with a really interesting idea to explain why they were a smaller issue in cities than outside of them.
Hookworm is an interesting example to consider here; you catch them by stepping on soil with your bare feet. Stereotypically they are a problem of the rural south. But I found this paper on "neglected tropical diseases" in the United States, which had this to say:
> Toxocariasis is a soil-transmitted helminth infection [it isn't hookworm, but hookworm is also a soil-transmitted helminth infection] that can result in visceral larva migrans, visual impairment from ocular larval migrans, or a condition that resembles asthma, known as covert toxocariasis. Urban playgrounds in the US have recently been shown to be a particularly rich source of Toxocara eggs, and inner-city children are at high risk of acquiring the infection.
https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journa...
Another example to consider might be covid, where my read of the consensus is that (1) initial nature -> human infection is more likely in rural areas (where there's more nature), but (2) once it can live in humans, it's a bigger problem in urban areas (where there are more humans).
That makes me wonder if there might be exceptions. The Aztecs had a large system of latrines and they dumped the waste into the lake to create night soil to use for their chinampas gardens. I wonder if that exposed them to more parasites or if the large organized labor force dealing with waste made Tenochtitlan more hygienic.