How Does Hookworm Cause Blood Loss in the Intestine?

[sameeralord]

Hello everyone,

When hookworm lives in your intestine and sucks your blood, what causes the main blood loss? Does the damaged blood vessels leak into the intestine and get excreted or hookworm itself causes more damage? Thanks

 

[nismaratwork]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8916795

While that is not focused on your question, the strong correllation between egg-count and blood loss would seem to indicate that the hookworm itself is the cause of most loss. If damage along were the culprit, then I would expect the time infested as the biggest factor, but this implies that the increased feeding for production of eggs, and absolute worm count is the biggest factor.

There is also an unsupported, but logical supposition I will make, that a parasite such as hookworm benefits from minimizing loss of its food source to inefficiencies and damage, and therefore would tend to evolve to be efficient.

Additional support of worm load as the primary factor: http://www.tropicalmedandhygienejrnl.net/article/0035-9203(61)90035-9/abstract

 

[sameeralord]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8916795

While that is not focused on your question, the strong correllation between egg-count and blood loss would seem to indicate that the hookworm itself is the cause of most loss. If damage along were the culprit, then I would expect the time infested as the biggest factor, but this implies that the increased feeding for production of eggs, and absolute worm count is the biggest factor.

There is also an unsupported, but logical supposition I will make, that a parasite such as hookworm benefits from minimizing loss of its food source to inefficiencies and damage, and therefore would tend to evolve to be efficient.

Additional support of worm load as the primary factor: http://www.tropicalmedandhygienejrnl.net/article/0035-9203(61)90035-9/abstract

Thanks for the information

 

[nismaratwork]

Thanks for the information

My pleasure, I hope it's helpful.

 

[Quantum-lept]

there is a non-approved therapy using hookworms to "calm down" the immune response, which is reported to cure allergies and possibly MS. About 50 larvae are applied on a patch, where they then go through their normal evolution to enter the gut.

 

[nismaratwork]

there is a non-approved therapy using hookworms to "calm down" the immune response, which is reported to cure allergies and possibly MS. About 50 larvae are applied on a patch, where they then go through their normal evolution to enter the gut.

Do you have a source for this? I'd love to read the study. (not a trap, just curious)

 

[Quantum-lept]

It was anecdotal info that i read, but there may be some studies underway...google"hookworm allergy therapy."

http://www.healthcentral.com/allergy/c/3989/33077/treatment-hookworms


Woops...number of worms is 10, not 50...50 were tried and caused some discomfort...i just remembered the number 50, not the result of using that number...