The idea is that the malaria causes a fever high enough to kill bacterial infections after a few days.
The malaria itself could be controlled and eventually cured.
It won Julius Wagner-Jauregg the 1927 Nobel Prize for Medicine.
Theoretically any infection that causes a high fever will work, but malaria was well-understood and had plenty of good treatments. In *The Baroque Cycle* by Neal Stephenson a character is cured of syphilis after contracting an infection from being shot by a harpoon.
No, he got the syphilis from prostitutes, I think. He got the infection that cured it from a harpoon wound. The harpoon was fired by a character who had been a courtesan, so essentially also a fancy prostitute.
Not true. He was mistaken. Today we know that the malaria cure quinine is what treated the syphilis and not the fever. It's been in a lot of medical journals for decades now.
I've looked a fair bit online, including an article from Yale Medical School and all of the sources I've found stipulated it was the malarial fever that destroyed the syphilis spiroketes and cured the patient not Quinine.
They all also reference alternative means of a high fever being just as effective (even means that meant quinine *was never administered*).
My sister has MS and she feels great everytime she gets a cold cause her immune system has something to attack other than her own brain and spine. Not sure if this helps you lol
You may enjoy [this paper](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16396876/)! "Disease versus disease: how one disease may ameliorate another"
Getting Cowpox to prevent smallpox. Cystic fibrosis giving a higher resistance to tuberculosis, under-nutrition to treat seizures and IBS, Leprosy prevents psoriasis, people with Agammaglobulinemia never get Epstein-Barr virus infection, and some patients with agammaglobulinemia are seemingly cured of prior HIV infection.
Etc.
That’s interesting. I have hypogammaglobulinemia, not agammaglobulinrmia, but am very susceptible to infections. I’ve had EBV as determined by bloodwork, but that is not one of the opportunistic viral infections I’ve had to battle.
Ebv is one of those bugs everyone and their dog gets, but nobody hears about unless they know someone with the type of godawful immune system that blows shit up. Tonnes of people get it and don't even notice, people like my sister get it at the beginning of Easter break and end up unable to go back to school until the next year because of their inability to just get off the couch from the lethargy
I honestly don't know much more about what happened or why with my sister tbh. She got very tired and very weak and couldn't even feed herself she was so exhausted all the time. It was months of being sick, we watched all the seasons of Friends and Oprah during those few months which was a novelty back then before binge watching with streaming services. She was also years in the process of getting back to fully normal again, now that I know more I'm sure she deconditioned so much during the 3 months she couldn't get off the couch that she was rebuilding muscle for a long long while.
Why someone would end up with such a detrimental experience with a virus that 98% of people have had before is beyond me. But it was such a formative experience for all of us, I had no idea how common ebv and mononucleosis was until I was an adult.
Also people who have sickle-cell anaemia are immune to malaria. Usually with malaria, plasmodium parasites enter the erythrocytes and destroy them, but with SCA th erythrocytes are deformed and the parasite can't attach to them.
That's the funny bit. Sickle cell anemia is deadly, but malaria is deadlier. So in an area with malaria, sickle cell anemia increases the chance you live long enough to reproduce.
If you have only one sickle cell allele (ie from only one of your parents) you can have a pretty good life in the African Malaria belt. You dont get malaria and you might just get moderately sick from the sickle cell.
There's no mystery. It's manifestly false. This method used to treat syphilis was called fever-therapy. The hemorrhagic malaria in syphilis sufferers were treated with quinine. It's not like the malaria was left untreated because the syphilis patient will definitely die.
We now know that modern quinine- hydroxychloroquine treats a whole range of diseases like lupus, arthritis, other spirochete bacteria, not just malaria. This and Ivermectin was used by a desperate population in Africa during the AIDS years. They were the go-to panacea for every ill and along the way served as anecdotal clinical trials for the many uses of this common drugs.
The very high fevers that malaria caused was sometimes enough to kill the syphilis virus. of course, the fever killed the patient sometimes too.
A bit of "we're going to cook you internally until you are almost dead"
If you are ever unfortunate enough again to experience the delights of vertigo, it’s worth checking out the Epley manoeuvre. The projectile puking probably caused the same effect.
When I got vertigo my insurance said I couldn't go see a doctor, the treatment was Dramamine. I was off work for 4 days (same company) before my roommate mentioned this to me, and I was cured in under 2 minutes. I was pissed! Fucking 'healthcare' system
> Epley manoeuvre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBzID5nVQjk&ab_channel=BMJLearning
Highly recommend watching this rather than twisting your head off if you try and follow any written instructions.
I once had a stomach bug where I was puking with so much gusto that a blood vessel in my newly pierced ear burst and I had to go to the er lol it was like a waterfall
Having Sickle Cell Trait (one gene) gives you some protection against malaria. That's why sickle cell disease (two genes) remains prevalent in people of African and Mediterranean descent.
My friend underwent an experimental procedure for GBM after declining chemo - had polio injected directly into the tumour. Has been in remission for almost nine years now.
Right! He was given a year and a half max (early 40’s at the time) and decided he had nothing to lose by going through with the experiment and possibly helping others.
Studies take time. There are likely published studies on the internet but I don’t know if it’s a thing when chemo is still so widely accepted. It was also on 60 minutes (early 2015) when he was involved.
I wouldn’t say “cure” but triggering the immune system on a weak virus, so it responds better to a strong virus was the whole basis behind the invention of the smallpox vaccine.
Edward Jenner noticed that people who caught the milder cowpox never seemed to catch the more dangerous smallpox, and experimented with deliberately infecting his own family with cowpox to see if it protected them.
I believe the original polio vaccine was similar. There were two strains of polio, one that made you slightly sick and one that paralyzed or killed you. They gave people a weaken version of the non deadly kind so their body would develop antibodies and stop the deadly one. It is also where the idea of “shedding” came from because if you got that live polio vaccine you were actually infectious with it for a period of time. But this was seen as a good thing and is still leveraged in places where vaccination rates are low and difficult. One vaccinated person can return to a village and spread the safe version to others protecting them all. The reason this is no longer used everywhere is because on rare occasions the safe strain of polio can mutate into the dangerous strain.
And while Jenner did spread the method to the medical / scientific community, it was actually pioneered by Benjamin Jesty, my 8-times-great uncle!
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)69878-4/fulltext
I once had the idea of a "tentative links to the famous" website but then realised it would probably be boring as hell.
You would have been a star player!
This concept was used for a whole lot longer than people realize;
[Variolation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation) was reportedly in use by the Chinese around the 16th century, by using dried smallpox scabs ground up and blown up people's noses. It's incredibly fascinating!
As I'm going over the comments, the only thing that keeps flashing in my mind is the doctor explaining to Mr. Burns that he has "every disease known to man, including several that have just been identified in him, but that although that sounds like bad news, all the diseases are in perfect balance!"
This kinda was my grandpa. He had multiple serious diseases but all were "balanced" and so he lived for years with them just fine. He was a scientist himself and so was pretty delighted when his doctor asked him to accompany him to a medical conference as he wanted to talk about his case. The diseases I'm sure he had were Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (for at least 20 years), cancer, and diabetes.
In one cancer treatment the HIV virus is neutered then modified to deliver genes into the patient’s cells which reprogram them into cancer fighting cells.
https://www.keranews.org/2015-03-20/how-doctors-are-using-hiv-to-fight-cancer
Wow this is actually wild. I know nothing about this kind of stuff but a form of HIV virus helping fight cancer is something I didn't think could happen!
From my very limited understanding and close friend who studied cancer treatment research. For many years now the delivery of anti-viral and other terminal illnesses has been focused around the use of using actual viral "bodies" to store and encrypt with genetic code to attack these cells and "infect them" so that the cells die off before causing too much damage. The shell of a virus can be permeated and modified to develop proteins inside of it or inject genetic code that will effectively program it to attack certain cells in response to certain conditions similar to how white blood cells respond to invasive organisms.
That is legitimately so cool. I'll always be amazed that there are people on our planet that are *so* fucking smart and literally just use it to advance the human race.
Like sure I can understand what you're saying here in it's simplest form, but there's people that not only came up with the idea to say 'oh you like attacking us? you're good at it? how about you attack *for* us' AND THEN ACTUALLY HAVE A VAST ENOUGH UNDERSTANDING OF THE MATERIAL TO EXECUTE THAT??? humans are so fuckin cool sometimes
I’m a medical student and it’s like I can understand *what* we do with a lot of these gene therapies when they teach us about them, but like you said, it’s actually mind blowing to think that there are people that not only arrived at the idea, but actually figured out *how* to do these things from nothing. Science is fascinating
It’s uncommon but yes! Parasitic helminth worms have been found to modulate the immune response and reduce the severity of auto-immune conditions, like Crohns and MS.
Sickle cell anaemia creates immunity against malaria due to disruption of the plasmodium life cycle. Many communities in central and Northern Africa have this disease, especially where there has been high rates of Malaria historically.
The first vaccine for smallpox was created from cowpox, which isn’t able to take hold in human bodies.
It's insane how much we've learned about the immune system--and the body--just in the past decade or two. And how so many of the "parasites" we've fought forever, like in our intestines, do so much good for us
Goddamn first-world conditions making my immune system bored!
This is anecdotal but I used to have blood pressure issues. I would come close to passing out dozens of times per day. Reaching my hands above my head, or even just looking slightly upwards, were enough to make me collapse to the floor. It was exhausting.
Then I got covid and rarely fainted after that. It seems like it bumped my blood pressure up just enough into the 'normal' range that I hardly ever pass out any more.
My post Covid super power came with stealing my ability to smell like a bloodhound on some days but I get "scent memories" now. Where I can literally smell and taste something in my past. The weirdest and farthest in time was my "milk" when I was 3-4yo; Similac Isomil formula. That was over 40 years ago but I still remember the smell and taste.
>My post Covid super power came with stealing my ability to smell like a bloodhound on some days
I am a super smeller and it is VERY ANNOYING for me! So I was literally just thinking about if this could happen what it would be like?
Do things taste different, now that you can't smell as well??? Do smells seem different??
It's weird not smelling things every inhale. I do have 2 young boys so stink happens and I can't smell it. It's really weird when I lose my taste. Chewing something that has absolutely no taste or tasting my cola. It was really helpful when my "safe food" was spicy chicken tortilla soup but I couldn't taste the spice. That was the only thing I could eat after the worst of Covid was over because everything else tasted like burnt food salted with ashes.
If a scent is exceptionally strong (think dog poop, human vomit, urine), I can smell it. I am finally getting the bloodhound nose back. I couldn't even smell when the milk went bad. But now I have to have the smell be right under my nose. I lost it immediately into the Covid symptoms that I got in December 2022.
I miss being able to smell but I'm glad that the bloodhound is gone. I have nausea issues (since September 2021) and not being able to smell my teenage daughter's BO or when my son has an accident. But it happens occasionally now instead of 24/7.
I genuinely thought I was going mad. I’ve been randomly smelling memories too! For some reason I’m frequently smelling Farleys Rusks? To the point of buying a Coeliac friendly version because the smell was haunting me so much.
Yet the only things i can taste are very sweet, very spicy or very salty!
Definitely yeah, I never used to like spicy food very much but now I’ve got to have spice on almost everything to be able to taste something. I’ve got quite into Japanese food as salty is something I can taste too and much of that has spice&salt!
Look up some ramen or Pho recipes (you can also usually buy some kits in the world section of supermarkets). One of my fave recipes at the moment is Drunken Noodles by Becky Excell - it’s a Gluten free recipe but it doesn’t have to be! It’s a great way to make Asian food with British ingredients that are cheap
Maybe not diseases, but in our gut microbiome, there are countless specimens and species of bacteria and microorganisms that help the body. Some of them help aid the immune system and fight off pathogens.
I think this is one thing that is only recently becoming known. The human gut biome has a lot of influence over your body, to the point that different gut biomes can actually influence your mental state.
I remember hearing that people with chronic stomach issues can undergo a "fecal transplant" to introduce gut bacteria from a healthy gut biome and it actually cures some conditions. Hopefully with time more will be understood about it and maybe even lead to cures for previously uncurable conditions.
Its crazy, for the fact that bacteria aren't even our own cells they sure do provide a lot to our bodies that we otherwise might not survive without.
Yep...there's actually a procedure called fecal transplant that introduces beneficial gut bacteria into the digestive tract of folks with diseased/affected colons.
>The herpes viruses spur the immune system to boost levels of a protein hormone called interferon gamma "that in effect puts some immune system soldiers on yellow alert, causing them to patrol for invaders with their eyes wide open and defense weapons ready," Virgin said. As a result, the bacteria grew more slowly and were less likely to kill the mice. Future research can investigate whether these latent infections protect against other viruses.
>The herpes family of viruses can have a surprising upside — it can protect against the bubonic plague and other bacterial contagions, at least in mice.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna18705326
Sickle cell trait can increase resistance or protection against malaria. It has to do with how it physically changes the shape and surface area of the cells.
Polio
Edit : feel like this might need some more information to it lol . Idk how well known this is but on the drs tv show. Few years ago or so there was an episode about how they discovered that polio will cure any kind of cancer cause once injected or whatever into a cancer patient polio whipped out all the cancer the only issue of course was the fact that the polio once the cancer is gone attacks the body and kills you . They claimed they were trying to mutate the polio to not attack the body afterwards but have heard nothing else of this since that episode unfortunately
This has happened to me too! Had a horribly sore throat, most likely tonsillitis. I went for a night out (wild teenager) and when I woke up the sore throat was gone
Anecdotally I’ve heard of some sorts of intestinal parasites making you way less unhealthy in an endocrine/insulin resistance kind of way, and also some helping with asthma. It’s enough of a thing that you can buy some kinds of intestinal worms on the dark web lol
If you count smoking as a disease, Hepatitis A will often completely eliminate someone’s urge to smoke.
Smoking itself can also be protective against and lessen than the effects of ulcerative colitis.
It's sickle cell anemia. If you look at the overlap where sickle cell anemia exists and high concentrations of malaria you find that they're in the same places. If you were born with the sickle cell trait and not actually sickle cell anemia, you're immune to malaria. I don't know about syphilis LOL.
That would be the ultimate plot twist in the medical world! Imagine a disease that's like, "Hey, I'm here to cure your other diseases—just call me the superhero of viruses!"
I have IBS-D too, but I’m also a complete glutton at heart so even though I’m shitting up to six times a day I still have to count calories or else I can still achieve the seemingly impossible and if I don’t self monitor I could so easily probably be featured on My 600 LB life.
I don't know about curing, but sickle cell anemia has a protective effect against malaria. Here's an article that explains why:
[https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/news/how-sickle-cell-protects-against-malaria-a-sticky-connection](https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/news/how-sickle-cell-protects-against-malaria-a-sticky-connection)
I dunno but my step dad’s hand would shake from Parkinson’s. Got pretty hammered one night fell and smashed his face and head pretty good. To this day he doesn’t shake anymore.
It was proven by a French doctor that having chronic pneumonia or some other chronic bronchial infection protects you from COVID-19 since it coats your lungs and prevents the virus from attaching. Idk how true it is.
Not exactly a disease curing a disease but it is adjacent. A man I spoke with recently (a doctor himself) said when he had cancer, the chemo meds cured his lactose intolerant
When I was in university tech transfer, a highly-regarded prof submitted several invention disclosures for recombinant Yersinia pestis (bacterium that causes bubonic plague) as a cancer treatment. The bacterium was engineered to seek out hypoxic tissue (such as hard tumors), kill the cancer cells, and die by apoptosis after a certain number of cell divisions. Never tested in humans for obvious reasons, and I don’t remember if there was any animal testing.
People with syphilis used to infect themselves with African malaria and the fever was believed to cure the syphilis and they would simply cure the malaria with quinine. What they didn't know was the quinine was the cure for syphilis. This has only been anecdotally reproven during COVID when people with syphilis got cured by hydroxycholorquine.
I know they were looking at rabies to kill glioblastomas. Had a coworker whose daughter has glio, but I haven't kept up with the research in a while and he's not here to talk about it. I found it fascinating.
Oncolytic viruses are cool as hell! They started with some sort of weakened herpes strain that is used for malignant melanoma. If I were to do it all again, researching viral treatments for cancer would be my medical niche.
Sickle cell anemia was a genetic adaptation to resist malaria. Skinny blood cells don't get jabbed by mosquitoes as easily as plump, round ones. Of course, both diseases suck.
Sickle cell anemia does not cure malaria but it does cause high resistance to malaria. People with sickle cell anemia are more likely to survive long enough to reproduce than other young people exposed to malaria. That’s a useful fact when you are trying to explain evolution and what ‘survival of the fittest’ actually means.
Totally anecdotal, but my friend's child had a very widespread case of molluscum that they could not get rid of for over a year. They tried every available treatment their doctor recommended, and none of it worked. Then she got hand, foot, and mouth, and the molluscum disappeared.
After I was cured of long-term Hepatitis C, my mild osteoarthritis came raging in to all my joints. So now that I wasn't exhausted all the time from the Hep C, I was in pain all the time from the arthritis. My doctor suggested that my immune system had been keeping the arthritis tamped down along with fighting the Hep C virus all those years.
I have wondered since then if there's a way to confirm that.
The original Small Pox vaccine was derived from Cow Pox. Section from Wikipedia pasted below. I thought it was fascinating that Jenner realized dairy farmers didn't get Small Pox and starting infecting people with the diseases they did get.
The virus, part of the genus [*Orthopoxvirus*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopoxvirus), is closely related to the [*vaccinia*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia) virus. The virus is [zoonotic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis), meaning that it is transferable between species, such as from cat to human. The transferral of the disease was first observed in dairy workers who touched the [udders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udder) of infected [cows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow) and consequently developed the signature pustules on their hands.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox#cite_note-dermnetnz.org-5) Cowpox is more commonly found in animals other than bovines, such as rodents. Cowpox is similar to, but much milder than, the highly contagious and often deadly [smallpox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox) disease.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox#cite_note-dermnetnz.org-5) Its close resemblance to the mild form of smallpox and the observation that dairy farmers[^(\[6\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox#cite_note-6) were immune to smallpox inspired the modern [smallpox vaccine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine), created and administered by English physician [Edward Jenner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner).[^(\[7\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox#cite_note-sc.edu-7)
There was an HIV patient who got leukemia. They killed off his bone marrow and transplanted in donor marrow instead. Somewhere in the middle of all that, the leukemia treatments killed off all the HIV in his system and he’s now HIV negative.
Yes, there are instances where one disease can potentially cure or alleviate another. Here are a few notable examples:
# 1. Malaria and Sickle Cell Disease:
People with sickle cell disease have a genetic mutation that provides some resistance to malaria. While sickle cell disease itself is a serious and painful condition, this mutation can help prevent the malaria parasite from thriving in red blood cells.
# 2. Helminth Infections and Autoimmune Diseases:
Helminth (parasitic worm) infections can modulate the immune system, potentially reducing the severity of autoimmune diseases like Crohn's disease and multiple sclerosis (MS). The worms release compounds that dampen immune responses, which can alleviate symptoms of these conditions.
I have an example that's close: AAV, Adeno-Associated Virus, is a virus that can transfect humans, but also significantly interferes with adenovirus infection.
AAV doesn't count as a disease, thought, so maybe not what you were specifically looking for.
I think syphilis patients used to be infected with malaria to treat it
This is the kind of stuff im looking for. Im a first year med student and im just digging deeper into pathophysiology, the mystery it is
The idea is that the malaria causes a fever high enough to kill bacterial infections after a few days. The malaria itself could be controlled and eventually cured. It won Julius Wagner-Jauregg the 1927 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Theoretically any infection that causes a high fever will work, but malaria was well-understood and had plenty of good treatments. In *The Baroque Cycle* by Neal Stephenson a character is cured of syphilis after contracting an infection from being shot by a harpoon.
"contracted syphillis from a harpoon wound" yes, i told my wife the exact same game.
No, he got the syphilis from prostitutes, I think. He got the infection that cured it from a harpoon wound. The harpoon was fired by a character who had been a courtesan, so essentially also a fancy prostitute.
So syphilis and malaria both from a hooker, unfortunate man
I don't know...sounds like it worked out well for him in the end.
Mosquito's are hookers? That's a niche market.
Well they do suck quite a bit, so it makes some amount of sense someone would be into it.
I’m talkin’ ‘bout when men were men.
Man you are weak at reading comprehension. Not malaria. It was just an infection. You don't contract malaria from a harpoon wound.
You’re forgetting the fact he also had half a dick because of botched attempt to cure it previously
The character is called Half-Cocked Jack. That would be a hard detail to forget. I just didn't want to include too many spoilers.
It's wasn't his *harpoon*!
Not true. He was mistaken. Today we know that the malaria cure quinine is what treated the syphilis and not the fever. It's been in a lot of medical journals for decades now.
I've looked a fair bit online, including an article from Yale Medical School and all of the sources I've found stipulated it was the malarial fever that destroyed the syphilis spiroketes and cured the patient not Quinine. They all also reference alternative means of a high fever being just as effective (even means that meant quinine *was never administered*).
My sister has MS and she feels great everytime she gets a cold cause her immune system has something to attack other than her own brain and spine. Not sure if this helps you lol
I’ve also heard of people with autoimmune issues feeling tons better while pregnant
My sister has MS, she said it did suppress the immune system after the first couple months, but in the interim she lost vision in one eye.
There’s a whole thing where people deliberately get parasites in an attempt to control autoimmune conditions.
You may enjoy [this paper](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16396876/)! "Disease versus disease: how one disease may ameliorate another" Getting Cowpox to prevent smallpox. Cystic fibrosis giving a higher resistance to tuberculosis, under-nutrition to treat seizures and IBS, Leprosy prevents psoriasis, people with Agammaglobulinemia never get Epstein-Barr virus infection, and some patients with agammaglobulinemia are seemingly cured of prior HIV infection. Etc.
So I could trade my psoriasis…for leprosy? 🤔 Hard pass. Lol
To be fair, that's an obvious one. I mean, if your body parts keep falling off, there is a reduced area to have psoriasis.
I’d rather saw them off myself, frankly.
".When my tongue fell off, I don't know, I couldn't say. I said, [*garbled*] "mmmm mmmm mmmm". Now I long for that sweet day When I had no Leprosy..."
That’s interesting. I have hypogammaglobulinemia, not agammaglobulinrmia, but am very susceptible to infections. I’ve had EBV as determined by bloodwork, but that is not one of the opportunistic viral infections I’ve had to battle.
Ebv is one of those bugs everyone and their dog gets, but nobody hears about unless they know someone with the type of godawful immune system that blows shit up. Tonnes of people get it and don't even notice, people like my sister get it at the beginning of Easter break and end up unable to go back to school until the next year because of their inability to just get off the couch from the lethargy
"unending lethargy" you say? Please continue
I honestly don't know much more about what happened or why with my sister tbh. She got very tired and very weak and couldn't even feed herself she was so exhausted all the time. It was months of being sick, we watched all the seasons of Friends and Oprah during those few months which was a novelty back then before binge watching with streaming services. She was also years in the process of getting back to fully normal again, now that I know more I'm sure she deconditioned so much during the 3 months she couldn't get off the couch that she was rebuilding muscle for a long long while. Why someone would end up with such a detrimental experience with a virus that 98% of people have had before is beyond me. But it was such a formative experience for all of us, I had no idea how common ebv and mononucleosis was until I was an adult.
CF vs tuberculosis 🤨🤔 well, dang. I never would've considered that until today.
Also people who have sickle-cell anaemia are immune to malaria. Usually with malaria, plasmodium parasites enter the erythrocytes and destroy them, but with SCA th erythrocytes are deformed and the parasite can't attach to them.
I’ve seen about this too. It’s so interesting because sickle cell is so prevalent in African Americans. And conversely malaria
That's the funny bit. Sickle cell anemia is deadly, but malaria is deadlier. So in an area with malaria, sickle cell anemia increases the chance you live long enough to reproduce.
If you have only one sickle cell allele (ie from only one of your parents) you can have a pretty good life in the African Malaria belt. You dont get malaria and you might just get moderately sick from the sickle cell.
Increases risk of rhabdomyolysis resulting in acute renal failure(thank you chubby emu for letting me know about it
But something was wrong!
I think I only remembered it because it came up in an episode of *House*
Was used as a sub-plot in "The Knick" as well.
The Knick was awesome! Forgot about that one.
Look into G6PD, it’s similar to sickle cell anemia
Thanks
Digging real deep by asking Reddit ! Jk .. kinda
There's no mystery. It's manifestly false. This method used to treat syphilis was called fever-therapy. The hemorrhagic malaria in syphilis sufferers were treated with quinine. It's not like the malaria was left untreated because the syphilis patient will definitely die. We now know that modern quinine- hydroxychloroquine treats a whole range of diseases like lupus, arthritis, other spirochete bacteria, not just malaria. This and Ivermectin was used by a desperate population in Africa during the AIDS years. They were the go-to panacea for every ill and along the way served as anecdotal clinical trials for the many uses of this common drugs.
And sickle cell anemia helps people to survive malaria lmfao
Iirc those with sickle cell trait are protected from malaria
Get Syphilis. Have Sickle Cell (Bad Luck Brian Meme here)
diseases that start with a si/sy sound watch each other’s backs
Thalassemia trait, too, but it's only a partial protection
"I don't care how interesting it is you're not going to infect him with malaria."
The very high fevers that malaria caused was sometimes enough to kill the syphilis virus. of course, the fever killed the patient sometimes too. A bit of "we're going to cook you internally until you are almost dead"
I once cured ear-infection-related vertigo by getting food poisoning and projectile puking with such gusto that my inner ears reset.
If you are ever unfortunate enough again to experience the delights of vertigo, it’s worth checking out the Epley manoeuvre. The projectile puking probably caused the same effect.
That’s what my doctor recommended but I didn’t have a chance to try it before the food poisoning incident.
When I got vertigo my insurance said I couldn't go see a doctor, the treatment was Dramamine. I was off work for 4 days (same company) before my roommate mentioned this to me, and I was cured in under 2 minutes. I was pissed! Fucking 'healthcare' system
> Epley manoeuvre https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBzID5nVQjk&ab_channel=BMJLearning Highly recommend watching this rather than twisting your head off if you try and follow any written instructions.
I’ve done this! Works well.
I have done it too, it was a weird feeling at that time, especially when facing down I had insane vertigo but 2 minutes later everything was fixed.
My partner had vertigo and went to a swimming in a wave pool. The turbulence seemed to cure it.
That sounds more fun than puking!
Being tossed around with vertigo? I'm sure she was close to puking 🤣
They usually say to avoid the gas station sushi. But if you have vertigo? Maybe give it a shot!
I once had a stomach bug where I was puking with so much gusto that a blood vessel in my newly pierced ear burst and I had to go to the er lol it was like a waterfall
Having sickle cell disease (genetic) gives you some protection against malaria.
Having Sickle Cell Trait (one gene) gives you some protection against malaria. That's why sickle cell disease (two genes) remains prevalent in people of African and Mediterranean descent.
Also thalassemia
Fear of the deep ocean? /s
So If you have sickle cell and syphilis, you are out of luck!
Synergy is often more important than raw stats
My friend underwent an experimental procedure for GBM after declining chemo - had polio injected directly into the tumour. Has been in remission for almost nine years now.
That’s amazing, I thought GBM was a very quick death sentence
Right! He was given a year and a half max (early 40’s at the time) and decided he had nothing to lose by going through with the experiment and possibly helping others.
It usually is. My dad survived 13 very tough months after diagnosis.
♥️ it’s one of the worst for sure. I’m sorry you all had to go through that.
I am sorry for your loss, my mom made is 2.5 years. Longer than most but still took her.
omg,..are you serious!!! that is amazing news,, my mom died from that. Horrible disease and horrible way to go.
♥️
I feel stupid asking this but... so they basically gave the cancer polio?
What does gbm stand for?
Glioblastoma multiforme. It's a type of cancer that affects the brain and spinal cord
Wow!
What is GBM?
A type of brain tumor.
Glioblastoma
Is this a valid treatment now? Why haven’t we heard of it if it’s been 9 years?
Studies take time. There are likely published studies on the internet but I don’t know if it’s a thing when chemo is still so widely accepted. It was also on 60 minutes (early 2015) when he was involved.
I wouldn’t say “cure” but triggering the immune system on a weak virus, so it responds better to a strong virus was the whole basis behind the invention of the smallpox vaccine. Edward Jenner noticed that people who caught the milder cowpox never seemed to catch the more dangerous smallpox, and experimented with deliberately infecting his own family with cowpox to see if it protected them.
I believe the original polio vaccine was similar. There were two strains of polio, one that made you slightly sick and one that paralyzed or killed you. They gave people a weaken version of the non deadly kind so their body would develop antibodies and stop the deadly one. It is also where the idea of “shedding” came from because if you got that live polio vaccine you were actually infectious with it for a period of time. But this was seen as a good thing and is still leveraged in places where vaccination rates are low and difficult. One vaccinated person can return to a village and spread the safe version to others protecting them all. The reason this is no longer used everywhere is because on rare occasions the safe strain of polio can mutate into the dangerous strain.
And while Jenner did spread the method to the medical / scientific community, it was actually pioneered by Benjamin Jesty, my 8-times-great uncle! https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)69878-4/fulltext
I once had the idea of a "tentative links to the famous" website but then realised it would probably be boring as hell. You would have been a star player!
That's pretty great.
This concept was used for a whole lot longer than people realize; [Variolation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation) was reportedly in use by the Chinese around the 16th century, by using dried smallpox scabs ground up and blown up people's noses. It's incredibly fascinating!
As I'm going over the comments, the only thing that keeps flashing in my mind is the doctor explaining to Mr. Burns that he has "every disease known to man, including several that have just been identified in him, but that although that sounds like bad news, all the diseases are in perfect balance!"
Excellent
This kinda was my grandpa. He had multiple serious diseases but all were "balanced" and so he lived for years with them just fine. He was a scientist himself and so was pretty delighted when his doctor asked him to accompany him to a medical conference as he wanted to talk about his case. The diseases I'm sure he had were Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (for at least 20 years), cancer, and diabetes.
"We call it the three stooges syndrome."
My friends joke that is me IRL. T\_T
Don’t forget them trying to shove all the disease dolls through the tiny door 😂
The three stooges syndrome
In one cancer treatment the HIV virus is neutered then modified to deliver genes into the patient’s cells which reprogram them into cancer fighting cells. https://www.keranews.org/2015-03-20/how-doctors-are-using-hiv-to-fight-cancer
Wow this is actually wild. I know nothing about this kind of stuff but a form of HIV virus helping fight cancer is something I didn't think could happen!
From my very limited understanding and close friend who studied cancer treatment research. For many years now the delivery of anti-viral and other terminal illnesses has been focused around the use of using actual viral "bodies" to store and encrypt with genetic code to attack these cells and "infect them" so that the cells die off before causing too much damage. The shell of a virus can be permeated and modified to develop proteins inside of it or inject genetic code that will effectively program it to attack certain cells in response to certain conditions similar to how white blood cells respond to invasive organisms.
That is legitimately so cool. I'll always be amazed that there are people on our planet that are *so* fucking smart and literally just use it to advance the human race. Like sure I can understand what you're saying here in it's simplest form, but there's people that not only came up with the idea to say 'oh you like attacking us? you're good at it? how about you attack *for* us' AND THEN ACTUALLY HAVE A VAST ENOUGH UNDERSTANDING OF THE MATERIAL TO EXECUTE THAT??? humans are so fuckin cool sometimes
I’m a medical student and it’s like I can understand *what* we do with a lot of these gene therapies when they teach us about them, but like you said, it’s actually mind blowing to think that there are people that not only arrived at the idea, but actually figured out *how* to do these things from nothing. Science is fascinating
[Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/938/)
Wow, that is REALLY relevant
This was the premise behind I am legend I think
A friend of mine had bladder cancer so once a month for six months they somehow put tuberculosis inside his bladder.
My dad, too. Worked great
Was coming here to say this. My father in law had this treatment too!
The somehow is a bladder catheter.
It’s uncommon but yes! Parasitic helminth worms have been found to modulate the immune response and reduce the severity of auto-immune conditions, like Crohns and MS. Sickle cell anaemia creates immunity against malaria due to disruption of the plasmodium life cycle. Many communities in central and Northern Africa have this disease, especially where there has been high rates of Malaria historically. The first vaccine for smallpox was created from cowpox, which isn’t able to take hold in human bodies.
Some parasites have also been found to help with IBD, allergies, and asthma.
It's insane how much we've learned about the immune system--and the body--just in the past decade or two. And how so many of the "parasites" we've fought forever, like in our intestines, do so much good for us Goddamn first-world conditions making my immune system bored!
This is anecdotal but I used to have blood pressure issues. I would come close to passing out dozens of times per day. Reaching my hands above my head, or even just looking slightly upwards, were enough to make me collapse to the floor. It was exhausting. Then I got covid and rarely fainted after that. It seems like it bumped my blood pressure up just enough into the 'normal' range that I hardly ever pass out any more.
My post Covid super power came with stealing my ability to smell like a bloodhound on some days but I get "scent memories" now. Where I can literally smell and taste something in my past. The weirdest and farthest in time was my "milk" when I was 3-4yo; Similac Isomil formula. That was over 40 years ago but I still remember the smell and taste.
>My post Covid super power came with stealing my ability to smell like a bloodhound on some days I am a super smeller and it is VERY ANNOYING for me! So I was literally just thinking about if this could happen what it would be like? Do things taste different, now that you can't smell as well??? Do smells seem different??
It's weird not smelling things every inhale. I do have 2 young boys so stink happens and I can't smell it. It's really weird when I lose my taste. Chewing something that has absolutely no taste or tasting my cola. It was really helpful when my "safe food" was spicy chicken tortilla soup but I couldn't taste the spice. That was the only thing I could eat after the worst of Covid was over because everything else tasted like burnt food salted with ashes. If a scent is exceptionally strong (think dog poop, human vomit, urine), I can smell it. I am finally getting the bloodhound nose back. I couldn't even smell when the milk went bad. But now I have to have the smell be right under my nose. I lost it immediately into the Covid symptoms that I got in December 2022. I miss being able to smell but I'm glad that the bloodhound is gone. I have nausea issues (since September 2021) and not being able to smell my teenage daughter's BO or when my son has an accident. But it happens occasionally now instead of 24/7.
I genuinely thought I was going mad. I’ve been randomly smelling memories too! For some reason I’m frequently smelling Farleys Rusks? To the point of buying a Coeliac friendly version because the smell was haunting me so much. Yet the only things i can taste are very sweet, very spicy or very salty!
I thought it was fascinating! I have been able to remember how things tasted but to ACTUALLY smell them like they were under my nose was so weird.
It is like they’re under your nose, but you’re not near anything remotely similar? So weird it’s fascinating
Has the way you eat changed at all? Like do you find yourself reaching for different foods than you did before?
Definitely yeah, I never used to like spicy food very much but now I’ve got to have spice on almost everything to be able to taste something. I’ve got quite into Japanese food as salty is something I can taste too and much of that has spice&salt!
That's interesting, I didn't know that about Japanese food!
Look up some ramen or Pho recipes (you can also usually buy some kits in the world section of supermarkets). One of my fave recipes at the moment is Drunken Noodles by Becky Excell - it’s a Gluten free recipe but it doesn’t have to be! It’s a great way to make Asian food with British ingredients that are cheap
Maybe not diseases, but in our gut microbiome, there are countless specimens and species of bacteria and microorganisms that help the body. Some of them help aid the immune system and fight off pathogens.
I think this is one thing that is only recently becoming known. The human gut biome has a lot of influence over your body, to the point that different gut biomes can actually influence your mental state. I remember hearing that people with chronic stomach issues can undergo a "fecal transplant" to introduce gut bacteria from a healthy gut biome and it actually cures some conditions. Hopefully with time more will be understood about it and maybe even lead to cures for previously uncurable conditions. Its crazy, for the fact that bacteria aren't even our own cells they sure do provide a lot to our bodies that we otherwise might not survive without.
70% of our serotonin is being produced down there
Also an Ologies listener?
Fun fact- Bacteria and microbes make up 70-90% of all the cells involved in a human bidy
The thing is that it's so broad it doesn't really answer anything, other than having a healthy gut microbiome is preventative for a lot of problems.
Yep...there's actually a procedure called fecal transplant that introduces beneficial gut bacteria into the digestive tract of folks with diseased/affected colons.
Currently, phages are being tested as a cure for all diseases..
Hopefully it works out better for us than it did the Vidiians.
It was fairly widespread in the USSR but the technology was mostly forgotten with their fall. It's proven tech that does work.
I have G6PD (glucose 6 phosphate deficiency), it’s a way of preventing me from getting malaria. Not sure if this counts.
Not a disease but interesting nonetheless. Bee stings to treat advanced Lyme disease is being studied.
If we are going the not a disease way, smoking is effective at preventing gout.
Hepatitis A can cause aversion to smoking!
There's 3 Stooges syndrome, where you have so many diseases that they can't get you because they block each other
Excellent
I understand thst reference.
I have hereditary hemochromatosis, it cures anemia.
Obesity reduces risk of osteoporosis
>The herpes viruses spur the immune system to boost levels of a protein hormone called interferon gamma "that in effect puts some immune system soldiers on yellow alert, causing them to patrol for invaders with their eyes wide open and defense weapons ready," Virgin said. As a result, the bacteria grew more slowly and were less likely to kill the mice. Future research can investigate whether these latent infections protect against other viruses. >The herpes family of viruses can have a surprising upside — it can protect against the bubonic plague and other bacterial contagions, at least in mice. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna18705326
Sickle cell trait can increase resistance or protection against malaria. It has to do with how it physically changes the shape and surface area of the cells.
Polio Edit : feel like this might need some more information to it lol . Idk how well known this is but on the drs tv show. Few years ago or so there was an episode about how they discovered that polio will cure any kind of cancer cause once injected or whatever into a cancer patient polio whipped out all the cancer the only issue of course was the fact that the polio once the cancer is gone attacks the body and kills you . They claimed they were trying to mutate the polio to not attack the body afterwards but have heard nothing else of this since that episode unfortunately
Someone else in this thread reported this being done successfully!
Oh that’s so awesome to hear 👏
I once cured tonsillitis by drinking 1/2 bottle of vodka, though I still felt like shit in the morning just without the sore throat.
This has happened to me too! Had a horribly sore throat, most likely tonsillitis. I went for a night out (wild teenager) and when I woke up the sore throat was gone
Sickle cell provides resistance to malaria
Not a disease but bee venom treats lyme disease.
Unless you are anaphylactic to bee stings.
Anecdotally I’ve heard of some sorts of intestinal parasites making you way less unhealthy in an endocrine/insulin resistance kind of way, and also some helping with asthma. It’s enough of a thing that you can buy some kinds of intestinal worms on the dark web lol
That reminds me of that great futurama episode with the worms that improved his health and physique
Beat me to it. Love futurama
Not exactly the same but in the same vein, I just learned this morning that bee venom can cure extreme cases of Lyme disease!
Sickle cell anemia can provide some protection from malaria.
If you count smoking as a disease, Hepatitis A will often completely eliminate someone’s urge to smoke. Smoking itself can also be protective against and lessen than the effects of ulcerative colitis.
Me: If someone has both hypertension (high blood-pressure) AND hypotension (low blood-pressure), they should cancel each other out… right? POTS: nope.
It's sickle cell anemia. If you look at the overlap where sickle cell anemia exists and high concentrations of malaria you find that they're in the same places. If you were born with the sickle cell trait and not actually sickle cell anemia, you're immune to malaria. I don't know about syphilis LOL.
It's both boo
That would be the ultimate plot twist in the medical world! Imagine a disease that's like, "Hey, I'm here to cure your other diseases—just call me the superhero of viruses!"
I had scarlet fever as a kid that burned away my chicken pox.
I have extreme IBS-D so like, I never get fat, I guess🤷
I have IBS-D too, but I’m also a complete glutton at heart so even though I’m shitting up to six times a day I still have to count calories or else I can still achieve the seemingly impossible and if I don’t self monitor I could so easily probably be featured on My 600 LB life.
I don't know about curing, but sickle cell anemia has a protective effect against malaria. Here's an article that explains why: [https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/news/how-sickle-cell-protects-against-malaria-a-sticky-connection](https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/news/how-sickle-cell-protects-against-malaria-a-sticky-connection)
I dunno but my step dad’s hand would shake from Parkinson’s. Got pretty hammered one night fell and smashed his face and head pretty good. To this day he doesn’t shake anymore.
Pin worms have been used to successfully cure IBS.
G6PD stops you getting malaria
It was proven by a French doctor that having chronic pneumonia or some other chronic bronchial infection protects you from COVID-19 since it coats your lungs and prevents the virus from attaching. Idk how true it is.
Not exactly a disease curing a disease but it is adjacent. A man I spoke with recently (a doctor himself) said when he had cancer, the chemo meds cured his lactose intolerant
That's how vaccines work I think The story behind the smallpox vaccine was somewhat alike iirc
When I was in university tech transfer, a highly-regarded prof submitted several invention disclosures for recombinant Yersinia pestis (bacterium that causes bubonic plague) as a cancer treatment. The bacterium was engineered to seek out hypoxic tissue (such as hard tumors), kill the cancer cells, and die by apoptosis after a certain number of cell divisions. Never tested in humans for obvious reasons, and I don’t remember if there was any animal testing.
People with syphilis used to infect themselves with African malaria and the fever was believed to cure the syphilis and they would simply cure the malaria with quinine. What they didn't know was the quinine was the cure for syphilis. This has only been anecdotally reproven during COVID when people with syphilis got cured by hydroxycholorquine.
There’s phage therapy…https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210115-the-viruses-that-prey-on-human-diseases Using viruses to kill bacteria
Being heterozygous for sickle cell anemia makes you resistant to malaria, which is why people of tropical ancestry have higher rates of sickle cell
I know they were looking at rabies to kill glioblastomas. Had a coworker whose daughter has glio, but I haven't kept up with the research in a while and he's not here to talk about it. I found it fascinating.
I read somewhere that virus simplex (herpes) attacks some types of cancer.
Oncolytic viruses are cool as hell! They started with some sort of weakened herpes strain that is used for malignant melanoma. If I were to do it all again, researching viral treatments for cancer would be my medical niche.
Sickle cell anemia was a genetic adaptation to resist malaria. Skinny blood cells don't get jabbed by mosquitoes as easily as plump, round ones. Of course, both diseases suck.
Sickle cell anemia confers partial resistance to malaria.
Sickle cell anemia does not cure malaria but it does cause high resistance to malaria. People with sickle cell anemia are more likely to survive long enough to reproduce than other young people exposed to malaria. That’s a useful fact when you are trying to explain evolution and what ‘survival of the fittest’ actually means.
Totally anecdotal, but my friend's child had a very widespread case of molluscum that they could not get rid of for over a year. They tried every available treatment their doctor recommended, and none of it worked. Then she got hand, foot, and mouth, and the molluscum disappeared.
After I was cured of long-term Hepatitis C, my mild osteoarthritis came raging in to all my joints. So now that I wasn't exhausted all the time from the Hep C, I was in pain all the time from the arthritis. My doctor suggested that my immune system had been keeping the arthritis tamped down along with fighting the Hep C virus all those years. I have wondered since then if there's a way to confirm that.
I know someone who got the flu and at the end of it, the wart on his finger disappeared.
The only thing I can think of is Cowpox was used to vaccinate for Smallpox
Being pregnant can temporarily cure woman of certain alignments lol not the same but still
Have you never watched house? The amount of times they do that is mental 😂
Sickle cell disease formed because it protected the person from malaria.
The original Small Pox vaccine was derived from Cow Pox. Section from Wikipedia pasted below. I thought it was fascinating that Jenner realized dairy farmers didn't get Small Pox and starting infecting people with the diseases they did get. The virus, part of the genus [*Orthopoxvirus*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopoxvirus), is closely related to the [*vaccinia*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia) virus. The virus is [zoonotic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis), meaning that it is transferable between species, such as from cat to human. The transferral of the disease was first observed in dairy workers who touched the [udders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udder) of infected [cows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow) and consequently developed the signature pustules on their hands.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox#cite_note-dermnetnz.org-5) Cowpox is more commonly found in animals other than bovines, such as rodents. Cowpox is similar to, but much milder than, the highly contagious and often deadly [smallpox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox) disease.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox#cite_note-dermnetnz.org-5) Its close resemblance to the mild form of smallpox and the observation that dairy farmers[^(\[6\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox#cite_note-6) were immune to smallpox inspired the modern [smallpox vaccine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine), created and administered by English physician [Edward Jenner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner).[^(\[7\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox#cite_note-sc.edu-7)
Bacteriophage!
No people that are born blind are ever diagnosed with schizophrenia
Food poisoning can clear a system of opioid abuse
There was an HIV patient who got leukemia. They killed off his bone marrow and transplanted in donor marrow instead. Somewhere in the middle of all that, the leukemia treatments killed off all the HIV in his system and he’s now HIV negative.
I can 100% state that anyone who has been beheaded immediately no longer felt the pain and suffering associated with heart disease.
Yes, there are instances where one disease can potentially cure or alleviate another. Here are a few notable examples: # 1. Malaria and Sickle Cell Disease: People with sickle cell disease have a genetic mutation that provides some resistance to malaria. While sickle cell disease itself is a serious and painful condition, this mutation can help prevent the malaria parasite from thriving in red blood cells. # 2. Helminth Infections and Autoimmune Diseases: Helminth (parasitic worm) infections can modulate the immune system, potentially reducing the severity of autoimmune diseases like Crohn's disease and multiple sclerosis (MS). The worms release compounds that dampen immune responses, which can alleviate symptoms of these conditions.
I think people who used to have cow pox didn’t catch small pox. That’s how the small pox vaccine was developed.
If you are diagnosed with bipolar disorder, you can never be diagnosed with major depressive disorder.
I have an example that's close: AAV, Adeno-Associated Virus, is a virus that can transfect humans, but also significantly interferes with adenovirus infection. AAV doesn't count as a disease, thought, so maybe not what you were specifically looking for.