Radiolab

Your Friendly Neighborhood Hookworms

For most of human history, hookworms and other parasitic worms were ubiquitous companions to our species, and our immune systems evolved in their presence. The idea, known as the hygiene hypothesis or 'old friends' hypothesis, is that the absence of these organisms in the modern developed world has left our immune systems without the regulatory signals they evolved to expect — potentially contributing to the rise of allergies, autoimmune diseases, and inflammatory conditions.

Radiolab

Your Friendly Neighborhood Hookworms

For most of human history, intestinal worms were ubiquitous companions. Only in the twentieth century did sanitation campaigns and deworming programs scrub them from the bodies of people in wealthy nations. But some researchers now suspect that in eliminating these parasites, we may have also dismantled part of our immune system's essential operating instructions.