Tapeworms may be good for your brain Tapeworms get a bad reputation. They are voracious parasites that burrow into gut walls and devour nutrients like a nightmarish version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar . But not all tapeworms are bad. In fact, one type appears to protect against memory loss in rats. The discovery, researchers say, could lead to new treatment for some neurological diseases in humans, like Alzheimer’s. In the study, researchers divided 30 rats into two main groups: those infected with the rat tapeworm Hymenolepsis diminuta, and those with clean guts. To test the potential protection offered by H. diminuta , the team infected both groups of rodents with a one-two punch: a mild case of Escherichia coli shortly after birth to stimulate an immune response, and an injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) after they had been “wormed” as adults. LPS is a noninfectious component of bacteria that trips the immune system’s alarm, leading to a potentially overactive response in the brain that can be include swelling and confusion. Just as the researchers predicted, when the rats with worms were reintroduced to the scary shock box, they froze in fear, indicating they had a full memory of the previous day’s shock. But the wormless rats paused only half as much, suggesting their memories of the box were incomplete. The “wormy” rats froze as much as the double control group that was both worm-free and infection-free, suggesting that the worms had somehow protected the rats against memory loss after the infections. How did the rats with worm react when they were put into the scary shock box at the second time?

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Tapeworms may be good for your brain

Tapeworms get a bad reputation. They are voracious parasites that burrow into gut walls and devour nutrients like a nightmarish version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But not all tapeworms are bad. In fact, one type appears to protect against memory loss in rats. The discovery, researchers say, could lead to new treatment for some neurological diseases in humans, like Alzheimer’s.

In the study, researchers divided 30 rats into two main groups: those infected with the rat tapeworm Hymenolepsis diminuta, and those with clean guts. To test the potential protection offered by H. diminuta, the team infected both groups of rodents with a one-two punch: a mild case of Escherichia coli shortly after birth to stimulate an immune response, and an injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) after they had been “wormed” as adults. LPS is a noninfectious component of bacteria that trips the immune system’s alarm, leading to a potentially overactive response in the brain that can be include swelling and confusion.

Just as the researchers predicted, when the rats with worms were reintroduced to the scary shock box, they froze in fear, indicating they had a full memory of the previous day’s shock. But the wormless rats paused only half as much, suggesting their memories of the box were incomplete. The “wormy” rats froze as much as the double control group that was both worm-free and infection-free, suggesting that the worms had somehow protected the rats against memory loss after the infections.

How did the rats with worm react when they were put into the scary shock box at the second time?

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