DR MICHAEL MOSLEY: The key to eternal youth? Worms! But if you can't stomach that idea, here are my tips proven to work...

 

• Scientific paper points out what many diseases associated with ageing have in common is ‘inflammaging', type of chronic inflammation that increases with age
• Occurs because immune system mounts a low-level attack against organs 
• Academics suggest main trigger is an imbalance in the mix of microbes in gutNext month, I am going to be 64. Although I’m in reasonable shape, I know that as I get older, I’m at increased risk of a whole range of illnesses, including heart disease, dementia, cancer and, of course, more vulnerable to dying from infectious diseases such as Covid-19.

  For despite what the beauty industry promises, ageing is inevitable.

  But what if you could reduce your risk of some of those age-related illnesses by deliberately infecting yourself with blood-sucking parasites? Would youThat is a question posed by a fascinating new scientific paper, with the compelling title ‘Gross ways to live long’, written by academics from the Institute of Healthy Ageing, based at University College London.

  As they point out, what many of the diseases associated with ageing have in common is ‘inflammaging’, a type of chronic inflammation that increases as we get older. It occurs because our immune system begins to mount a low-level attack against our heart, brain and other organs, which then fall apart earlier than they should.

  

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  What if you could reduce your risk of some of those age-related illnesses by deliberately infecting yourself with blood-sucking parasites? Would you? Picture: Stock

  The academics suggest the main trigger of inflammaging is an imbalance in the mix of microbes in our gut, and in particular, the absence of ‘Old Friends’.

  Like us, our immune system comes into the world with an awful lot to learn. One of the things it needs to be quickly taught is what’s dangerous and must be fought, and what’s OK and should be left alone. 

  In the past, our immune system was taught how to behave by Old Friends, the ‘good’ microbes that live in our guts and which have evolved with us over millions of yearsSadly, thanks to the overuse of antibiotics and a diet of highly processed foods, our guts are no longer packed with these Old Friends, but have far more ‘bad’ microbes, encouraging lots of inflammaging.

  As well as our Old Friends, in recent times we’ve also killed off gut parasites such as hookworm (thanks, not least, to improved sanitation). This is a common type of worm found in soil worldwide.

  They start out as larvae and can grow up to around half an inch in length once they are inside you and live in your guts for up to ten years.

  

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  Next month, I am going to be 64. Although I’m in reasonable shape, I know that as I get older, I’m at increased risk of a whole range of illnesses, including heart disease, dementia, cancer and, of course, more vulnerable to dying from infectious diseases such as Covid-19

  You might think good riddance, but hookworms, like the Old Friends, used to play an important part in controlling and educating our immune system.

  Professor David Pritchard, a specialist in parasite immunology at Nottingham University, has been studying hookworms for decades. 

  He is so dedicated to his work that he once deliberately infected himself with them, as I discovered when I made a TV series on self-experimenters.

  He put hookworm larvae on a plaster, then put the plaster on his skin. The larvae burrowed through his skin, into his blood and eventually into his gut, where they latched on and began to feed.

  ‘They cause an intense itching when they start to burrow,’ he told me, ‘and then you feel nothing until they start feeding in your gut.’

  Cheering news

  Yesterday, February 12, was the 80th anniversary of one of our greatest triumphs against our microbial foes, when a British policeman became the first person in the world to be treated with new wonder drug, penicillin.

  A team at the University of Oxford had turned Sir Alexander Fleming’s discovery — that a fungus (penicillium) could kill microbes — into a life-saving drug. And it was a U.S. company called Pfizer that scaled up production in time for D-day.

  I’m particularly grateful, as in 1957 it was a shot of penicillin that saved my life when, as a baby, I came down with pneumonia.

  The interesting thing about hookworms is that to ensure their own survival, they produce chemicals that can selectively switch off parts of our immune system.

  When I last saw David, he and Professor Cris Constantinescu, a neurologist at Nottingham University, were planning to use the same technique to deliberately infect patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) with hookworms.

  One of the distressing things about MS is the progressive muscle weakness caused by the immune system mistakenly attacking the insulation around the nerves. 

  But would a worm infestation help dial this down? The answer, it seems, is yes. In results published recently in the journal JAMA Neurology, 71 patients with relapsing remitting MS (the most common version) were given the hookworm plaster or a placebo plaster.

  Nine months later, less than half the patients infected with hookworms showed signs of new nerve damage, while three quarters of the placebo group did. 

  Tests showed that the hookworm group had increased levels of a type of white blood cell that helps keep the immune system under control, and which is often reduced or absent in MS patients.

  The results of this study were so promising that further trials, using larger hookworm doses, are now being planned.

  There is also evidence that infecting patients with hookworms can help people with coeliac disease, an autoimmune disease which affects the bowels, while studies have also shown that infecting mice with hookworms, and other parasitic worms, can improve a whole range of illnesses, from heart disease to cancer.

  The trouble is not many of us are going to want to act as hosts to blood-sucking parasites. So it was encouraging to see a study, published last year by researchers from Glasgow University, where they injected mice with a protein called ES-62, produced by parasitic worms, which has powerful anti-inflammatory effects.

  The mice given daily injections of this protein were healthier and lived, on average 12 per cent longer than a control group. 

  As the researchers point out, this discovery could lead to the development of drugs to improve healthy ageing and even increase lifespan.

  

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  You might think good riddance, but hookworms, like the Old Friends, used to play an important part in controlling and educating our immune system

  While you are waiting for that to happen, you might like to know that you don’t have to get close to worms: other proven ways to reduce inflammaging include keeping to a healthy weight, doing regular exercise and eating a Mediterranean diet, rich in oily fish, olive oil and legumes.

  That is what I am doing and, so far, it seems to be working. 

   

  We can all help stop this wily virus mutating

  We always knew the coronavirus would mutate and new versions are now popping up all over the place, which is concerning.

  You might not howl at a full moon, but it will still affect you, as Yale University anthropologists found when they fitted sensors to people living in a wide range of settings. 

  It seems everyone went to bed later, and slept less, in the three to five days leading up to a full moon, possibly a vestige from a time when our ancestors would have taken advantage of a few extra minutes of light to go hunting. The UK’s next full moon, the Snow Moon, is on February27.

  
  

  One of the things that may be driving these new mutations is, ironically, a treatment that a few months ago was being hailed as a game-changer.

  Convalescent plasma therapy involves giving patients antibodies from people who have had Covid. Not only does it now appear to be relatively ineffective, it may also be encouraging mutations.

  Doctors at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, reported seeing the virus mutating before their eyes in a Covid patient in his 70s who had recently had chemotherapy for cancer.

  Blood samples showed the competition between different versions of the virus inside his body, with a mutant version (the Kent variant) eventually winning. The scary thing is he didn’t seem to have this on admission.

  Despite being given convalescent plasma, sadly the patient died.

  The scientists think that because his immune system had already been weakened (by chemotherapy), and the virus was given plenty of time to mutate, it was able to evolve. 

  They suggest the convalescent plasma contributed, highlighting the care needed in treating ‘immunocompromised patients, where prolonged viral replication can occur, giving greater opportunity for the virus to mutate’.

  With science on our side, we will come out on top. But this brings home the need for all of us not to give this wily virus an opportunity to spread.

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