http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 102449.htm
"One of the nice things about this discovery is that it is one of the few treatments in the auto-immune world and in the transplantation world that works not by attacking the effector cells, but by increasing the good regulating cells. So it works in a very different way from almost every other treatment we've got available," Dr Hodgkinson says.
Il-5 injections could be more palatable than inoculation by parasitic worms -- another approach in regulating auto-immune conditions, the researchers say.
International research shows swallowing helminths parasites can regulate the immune system and boost T-cell production to combat illnesses such as celiac disease and multiple sclerosis. The absence of the worms in guts in the developed world has been cited as a possible cause for the sharp rise in auto-immune diseases in Western nations.
"The process we've developed may be the same process that the helminths kick off. When you get a helminths infestation, one of the changes in your immune response is an increase in cells called eosinophils and these cells make the cytokine Interleukin-5," Dr Hodgkinson says.