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Immune and genetic aspects of asthma, allergy and parasitic worm infections: evolutionary links

Kristen Sparrow • June 14, 2021

Immune and genetic aspects of asthma, allergy and parasitic worm infections: evolutionary links

San Francisco Sity Sights. Nob Hill

This paper is over 10 years old, but it still has a lot to say.  I have yet to buy the pdf of the full paper. But it is a concise description of the concept of “old friends.”  When a person has  immunity to “old friends” such as Ascaris and Schistomona evolutionarily developed over millenia and then finds themselves in an environment where they are absent,  they have increased risk of asthma and allergies.

SUMMARY

There are important parallels in the immunobiology of allergy and asthma, and of the human host’s response to parasitic worms. Th-2 immune actions with ‘weep and sweep’ mucosal biology are common to both – pathological in the first and protective in the second. Common up-regulating genetic variants of Th-2 immunity, notably in IL13 and STAT6, predict increased risk of asthma and allergy, but diminished intensity of infection by Ascaris and Schistosoma. Endemic exposures of humans to parasitic worms may have been one evolutionary force selecting for genetic variants that promote asthma and allergy.