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Parasites and multiple sclerosis: trigger, or treatment?
Parohová, Irena ; Macháček, Tomáš (advisor) ; Krulová, Magdaléna (referee)
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory autoimmune disease and its growth has been recently recorded mostly in developed countries. Its yet unsolved origin contributes to difficulties with therapy of this disease. The influence of parasites in aetiology of MS has also been investigated, although never reliably proven in human trials. On the contrary, data from animal models of MS suggest a rather protective effect towards the disease progression, acquired through parasitic helmith infection. In the host helminths induce a variety of immunoregulatory mechanisms, which alleviate the ongoing inflammation in the central nervous system. These observations within the so-called helminthic therapy (mostly based on the application of whipworm Trichuris suis eggs) have been tested in human patients also. Up to date, results indicate a protective effect of application of T. suis to MS patients, however these clinical studies were executed only on a small number of probands. Besides this, pathological manifestations related to the infection of parasite occured in some cases. A solution could be the identification of specific parasite derived molecules with immunomodulatory potential.
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