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Hypothesis

Gross Ways to Live Long: Parasitic Worms as an Anti-Inflammaging Therapy?

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This version is not peer-reviewed

Submitted:

24 November 2020

Posted:

02 December 2020

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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, microbial and helminthic probiotic therapies 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, that 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?
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Subject: Medicine and Pharmacology  -   Pathology and Pathobiology
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
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