London: Researchers on Friday observed that an infection with a species of parasitic worm increases the fertility of women. The study that included 986 indigenous women from Bolivia indicated a lifetime of Ascaris lumbricoides, a type of roundworm, infection led to an extra two children.
Researchers, writing in the journal Science, suggested that the worm is altering the immune system to make it easier to become pregnant. They said that the findings could lead to “novel fertility enhancing drugs”, The BBC reported.
Nine children is the average family size for Tsimane women in Bolivia. And about 70% of the population has a parasitic worm infection.
Up to a third of the world’s population also lives with such infections. But while Ascaris lumbricoides increased fertility in the nine-year study, hook worms had the opposite effect, leading to three fewer children across a lifetime.
Prof Aaron Blackwell, one of the researchers , from the University of California Santa Barara, told the BBC News website: “The effects are unexpectedly large.”
He said women’s immune systems naturally changed during pregnancy so they did not reject the foetus. Prof Blackwell said: “We think the effects we see are probably due to these infections altering women's immune systems, such that they become more or less friendly towards a pregnancy.”
He said using worms as a fertility treatment was an “intriguing possibility” but warned there was far more work to be done “before we would recommend anyone try this”.
Bacterial and viral infections try to outpace the immune system by having explosive population growth. However, one scientist said that parasites did the opposite, “growing slowly and trying to suppress the immune system”, which is why they make vaccines less effective and lower levels of allergies.
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