Gross ways to live long: Parasitic worms as an anti-inflammaging therapy?

Bruce Zhang,David Gems

doi:10.7554/elife.65180

Abstract

Evolutionary medicine argues that disease can arise because modern conditions do not match those in which we evolved. For example, a decline in exposure to commensal microbes and gastrointestinal helminths in developed countries has been linked to increased prevalence of allergic and autoimmune inflammatory disorders (the hygiene hypothesis). Accordingly, probiotic therapies that restore ‘old friend’ microbes and helminths have been explored as Darwinian treatments for these disorders. A further possibility is that loss of old friend commensals also increases the sterile, aging-associated inflammation known as inflammaging, which contributes to a range of age-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease, dementia, and cancer. Interestingly, Crowe et al., 2020 recently reported that treatment with a secreted glycoprotein from a parasitic nematode can protect against murine aging by induction of anti-inflammatory mechanisms. Here, we explore the hypothesis that restorative helminth therapy would have anti-inflammaging effects. Could worm infections provide broad-spectrum protection against age-related disease?

Highlights

The aging process is the main cause of senescent multimorbidity, the co-occurrence of multiple chronic pathologies that includes the major diseases of late life
Like old friend microbes, reduced helminth infection in ultra-clean modern societies has been linked to increased rates of allergic and autoimmune inflammatory disease, while restorative helminth therapies can protect against these conditions
A number of earlier studies suggest that helminths can protect against such diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis (Ferrucci and Fabbri, 2018; Rea et al, 2018), type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis (Zhuang and Lyga, 2014), and cancer (Leonardi et al, 2018; Zuo et al, 2019; Figure 2a)

Summary

Introduction

The aging process is the main cause of senescent multimorbidity, the co-occurrence of multiple chronic pathologies that includes the major diseases of late life. Like old friend microbes, reduced helminth infection in ultra-clean modern societies has been linked to increased rates of allergic and autoimmune inflammatory disease, while restorative helminth therapies can protect against these conditions (see section). Could restorative therapy with helminths, given at low doses that do not cause illness, reduce inflammaging, and ameliorate the pathologies that it promotes (Figure 2a)?

Results

Conclusion