Chronic Parasite Syndrome?

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Chronic Parasite Syndrome?

Tiny Worms May Explain Mysterious Disease

Commentary

By Regush

What next? Medical research is full of intriguing surprises - if you

keep an open mind and can somehow prevent your vested interests from

spoiling all the fun. It's been my experience that much of what we

think we know about disease is a microscopic fragment of what we

really need to know before we decide to get all huffy and puffy and

full of ourselves.

Take chronic fatigue syndrome, a collection of symptoms including

fatigue, malaise, memory problems, painful muscles and joints and so

on. To this day, there are a bunch of scientific know-it-alls at the

National Institutes of Health who continue to insist CFS is an

all-in-the-mind disease. Good grief! Have they no imagination? Do they

need special counseling? Does the American Psychiatric Association

have an intimidating dossier on them?

Well, here's one of those fun scientific surprises for the

imagination-deprived. It's an account from California (I know what you

're thinking, so stop) that suggests a novel contributor to CFS. It's

a parasite. What? Surely I jest. The all-in-the-mind camp reading this

is hysterical, no doubt. No, this one's for real, or at the very least

we should give it a fair hearing.

It turns out that what looks like a new type of roundworm (named

cryptostrongylus pulmoni) has been identified in the sputum of CFS

patients and not in control subjects. This comes from a very small

study conducted by parasite expert Lawrence Kaplow, who knows full

well that he needs more research data before anyone really takes this

seriously.

This all started when Kaplow followed up on a case of a CFS

patient who had strange body rashes. With some difficulty (because the

parasite is not King Kong; it's less than a millimeter long), he

managed to flesh it out in sputum - mainly bits and pieces of it, such

as mouth parts and genitals. (Ugh! Is this why the

psychogenically-challenged NIH crowd avoids discussion of the body

parts of CFS patients and focuses on the so-called mind?)

Casualties of War?

Kaplow used an imaging system which allowed him to twirl the worm

specimens around for detailed examination. That's when he was able to

determine that the parasite had anatomical features that were related

to roundworms found in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Did soldiers

returning from the Vietnam War bring these roundworms to the U.S.?

Maybe, because there is some history about how soldiers bring back

parasitic infections from far-off war zones.

So does this mean that these roundworms are passed on from person

to person? Kaplow thinks not because he has not identified a stage of

the parasite in sputum that would suggest casual transmission. The

samples he has fished out have emerged in various states of decay.

So how do people become infected? Kaplow suggests the parasite

may be found in food because that's typically how roundworms are

contracted. And because the parasite appears to take its time

reproducing, Kaplow sees a possible relationship between outbreaks of

CFS that continue over several months and even years. Imagine, a

food-borne infection possibly involved in CFS.

I find it fascinating that this tiny bit of research also points

to the possibility that this type of roundworm infection affects a

person's immune system. Roundworm infections are known to be

associated with immune abnormalities, such as low serum cortisol (a

steroid hormone produced by the body), altered anti-viral responses,

and changes in certain white blood cells.

Once there is any assault on the immune system, chronic microbes

hanging out in the body - such as herpes viruses - may awaken and get

involved in the attack. CFS research certainly suggests a strong viral

input.

So, what do we make of this? Well, we obviously need more

research in this area. Disease is complex and science has to be on its

toes. Otherwise, it will dig itself a big ditch - much like the

all-in-the-mind crowd has done in its piffle of effort to understand

CFS.

Regush produces medical features for ABCNEWS. In his weekly

column, published Wednesdays, he looks at medical trouble spots,

heralds innovative achievements and analyzes health trends that may

greatly influence our lives. His latest book is The Breaking Point:

Understanding Your Potential for Violence; go here to preview his new

book, The Virus Within: A Coming Epidemic.