Helminths are worms that can live in the human intestine. Joel Weinstock, a gastroenterologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, studies how they affect inflammation and the body’s immune response. He spoke to Nature about how helminths might lead to treatments for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Immune-mediated diseases such as ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes and some allergies were very unusual problems before the twentieth century. It could be that an infection has made these diseases more common, but nobody has found a link with any particular infectious agent. The rise must be driven by environmental change…
Nature / Q&A with Joel Weinstock
