A team of Spanish researchers, belonging to the universities of Granada and Valencia, has developed advances to combat intestinal parasites, which has important implications in the treatment of some inflammatory diseases of the digestive system such as Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory process of the tract intestinal.
Among the human parasitic nematodes are white worms (pinworms) which are among human parasites, the least pathogenic and most known by our population, are found in the large intestine of many children. Its infection causes an intense itching, although it is not considered serious.
For its part, Crohn’s disease is a chronic inflammatory process of the intestinal tract mainly.
Researchers have used as a model the worm Aspiculuris, an intestinal parasite, present in mice, similar to human pinworms. The work shows that the decrease in the levels of IL-23 (a hormone-like protein used to regulate the inflammatory immune system) produced by administering antibodies against it causes the parasites to be unable to implant in the intestine. the treated animals. In this work, Spanish researchers have detected and described for the first time that at the level of intestine this regulation exists.
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