Couples attempting to have a child who struggle with fertility issues often try many unusual things with the hopes that they will increase their chances of conceiving: running less, eating a larger breakfast, avoiding specific types of fish, and even sleeping in total darkness.
But parasitic worms? That’s a new one. According to a recent study of more than 980 indigenous women from Bolivia, scientists have found that women infected by a specific species of roundworm were more likely to become pregnant and had an average of two more kids.
Lead author Aaron Blackwell, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues spent nine years studying the isolated Tsimane people residing in Bolivia’s lowlands, analyzing data to determine if these parasites had any impact on female fertility. As BBC News reported on Friday, they discovered that the answer was a resounding yes.
Infection by the roundworm Ascaris lumbricoides altered the women’s immune systems and made it easier for them to become pregnant, Blackwell’s team reported in the latest edition of the journal Science. The findings, they said, could lead to new types of fertility drugs.
Don’t try this at home, though (not yet, anyway)
In a press release, the UCSB researchers explained that they studied two different species of parasitic intestinal worms – hookworms (Necator americanus or Ancylostoma duodenale) and giant roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides) – to determine if either type of helminth had an impact on how soon a Tsimane woman’s next pregnancy would occur.
They found that hookworm infection tended to increase the intervals between births in women of all ages, but that younger females who were infected with roundworms were more likely to have shorter birth intervals than their non-infected counterparts. Over the course of a lifetime, mothers infected by hookworm would have two fewer children than uninfected women, while those with roundworms would have two additional children.
“These opposing effects are likely due to helminth infection affecting the immune system, which in turn affects the likelihood of conception,” Blackwell said in a statement. “Our findings suggest that helminth infections may have substantial effects on demographic patterns in developing populations. Further, these results may also have implications for fertility in developed populations, where many fertility problems are connected to autoimmune disorders.”
However, as he told BBC News, while using roundworms as a way to boost fertility may seem like an “intriguing possibility,” he cautioned that there was far more research that needed to be done “before we would recommend anyone try this.”
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Image credit: Wikimedia Creative Commons
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