Can Parasitic Worms Cure the Modern World’s Ills?

The Challenge of Parasitic Worms

Immunity to Parasitic Worms

Helminth infection provides a unique challenge to the host immune system. Not only are helminths complex multicellular organisms, but they have intricate life cycles with multiple developmental stages, several of which may coexist in the infected host. In most cases, the host response to helminth infection is characterized by eosinophilia, increased serum immunoglobulin (Ig) E and IgG4, and mas...

Parasitic worms and inflammatory diseases

The debate on whether infection precipitates or prevents autoimmunity remains a contentious one. Recently the suggestion that some unknown microbe can be at the origin of some chronic inflammatory diseases has been countered by accumulating evidence that decreasing infection rates might have an important role to play in the rising prevalence of autoimmune disorders. The 'Hygiene Hypothesis' was...

The Parasitic Worms of Man and the Domestic Animals

Cybersecurity’s Can of Worms

Security frameworks are reassessed and recreated in response to political paradigm shifts or revolutions, as was the case at the abrupt end of the Cold War. The two decades since however, have seen the advent of a different type of revolution, namely that of information and communication technologies, leading to a world interconnected and globalised as never before. The daily reliance on cybers...