Worms and the Treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Are Molecules the Answer?

Figure 1

T-cell subsets. Naïve CD4+ T cells are stimulated by antigen presenting cells and the cytokine environment to proliferate into a certain subset. There are three distinct effector T-cell subsets (red): Th1, Th2, and Th17. CD4+ regulatory T-cells (green) can be subdivided in CD4+CD25+ Treg, Tr1, and Th3 cells. Crohn’s disease is characterized by Th1, Th17 inflammation, whereas helminths induce Th2 and regulatory T-cells (modified from [36, 37]).