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Can diabetes be cured with worms? Scientists test a new treatment

More than 300,000 Canadians are living with type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disorder that requires constant daily attention. Now, new research suggests that an unlikely treatment may provide a simple cure to this debilitating illness. Enter, worms therapy.

Before you recoil at the ick factor, we're not talking earthworms or tapeworms or any type of worm that is even visible to the human eye, but the microscopic eggs, or "ova", of a parasitic organism called a pig whipworm.

Scientists at the medical research centre Coronado Biosciences in Boston are investigating whether this worm can treat a whole range of autoimmune diseases, including Crohn's disease, type 1 diabetes, colitis, multiple sclerosis, and inflammatory bowel disease. In all of these conditions, the body misidentifies its own cells as foreign pathogens and then attacks and often destroys them.

"Thorough research would be required before we would recommend it as an effective treatment for diabetes," says a spokesperson the Canadian Diabetes Association.

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What's interesting about autoimmune diseases is that in the nineteenth century, they were virtually non-existent.

This fact has led to the development of the hygiene hypothesis, the idea that foreign organisms we came into regular contact with historically -- like these pig whipworms -- were actually serving an important function by activating a normal immune response.

The theory is that thanks to good hygiene, these foreign bacteria are now scarce, and the body may turn to attacking itself in their absence. The fact that rates of autoimmune disease in developing countries are lower than in developed nations with more advanced hygiene practices supports this theory.

The use of biological agents like these pig whipworm ova to treat autoimmune diseases is known as helminthic therapy. The research team at Coronado Biosciences have had success treating Crohn's disease with the method, and are now running three clinical human trials to see if type 1 diabetes can also be treated this way.

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When a person has type 1 diabetes, their pancreas stops producing insulin, a hormone that allows them to get energy from food. The condition occurs because the body's immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. At the moment, type 1 diabetes is treated with multiple daily injections of insulin to ensure that blood insulin levels don't dip too low or spike too high. Patients must also check their blood insulin levels by pricking their finger for blood six or more times a day.

The treatment currently under trial at Coronado Biosciences involves drinking a small amount of saline solution that contains the invisible, tasteless, odorless pig hookworm ova once every two weeks or so.

"You're resetting the balance so that instead of attacking itself, the immune system is attacking what it's supposed to attack, which is outside bacteria," chief medical officer of Coronado Biosciences Karin Hehenberger tells Fox News.

Perhaps if these American trials prove this to be an effective antidote, will we be seeing this treatment in Canada at some point in the future.