At the moment the concoction cannot be stored for long, so doctors or hospitals would have to prepare fresh batches of the eggs for their patients. But a new German company called BioCure, whose sister company BioMonde sells leeches and maggots for treating wounds, hopes it will soon solve the storage problem.

It plans to launch a product called TSO, short for Trichuris suis ova. Chief executive Detlev Goj says the company will apply for approval by the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products as soon as the product is ready.

The pig whipworm was chosen as it does not survive very long in people. Patients would have to take TSO around twice a month. The human whipworm, which infects half a billion people, can occasionally cause problems such as anaemia.

The latest trials, carried out in the US, involved 100 people with ulcerative colitis and 100 with Crohn’s disease, both incurable and potentially serious diseases collectively known as inflammatory bowel disease.

Remission rate

In many of the volunteers the symptoms of IBD,¬ such as abdominal pain, bleeding and diarrhoea, disappeared. The remission rate was 50 per cent for ulcerative colitis and 70 per cent for Crohn’s, says gastroenterologist Joel Weinstock of the University of Iowa, who devised the treatment.

“A lot of researchers couldn’t believe this treatment was effective, but people are always sceptical when confronted with new ideas,” Weinstock says. He will announce the results in May at a conference in New Orleans, and full details will soon be published. “With our new impressive results, we can come out of the closet,” he says.

The trials follow the success of a pilot study, revealed by żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ in 1999. Weinstock came up with the idea of using worms to treat IBD after noticing that the sharp rise in the disease over the past 50 years in western countries coincided with a fall in infections by parasites such as roundworms and human whipworms. IBD is still rare in developing countries where parasitic infections remain common.

Weinstock’s theory is that our immune systems have evolved to cope with the presence of such parasites, and can become overactive without them.

Raymond Verheijen of the Free University of Amsterdam was commissioned by the
Royal Dutch Football Association to study the performance of some of its top
referees. Verheijen organised an experimental tournament involving four youth
teams. Each match lasted an hour, divided into three periods of 20 minutes
during which different referees were in charge.

Observers from the football association noted down the referees’ errors, of
which there were 61 over the tournament. “Converted to a standard match of 90
minutes, each referee made almost 23 mistakes, a remarkably high number,”
Verheijen says.

Verheijen then studied videotapes of the action to analyse the matches in
detail. Surprisingly, he found that errors were more likely when the referees
were close to the incident. When the officials got it right, they were, on
average, 17 metres away from the action. The average distance in the case of
errors was 12 metres. “My research shows the optimum distance is about 20
metres,” says Verheijen.

There also seemed to be an optimum speed. Correct decisions came when the
referees were moving at a speed of 2 metres per second, on average. The average
speed for errors was 4 metres per second.

If FIFA, soccer’s international ruling body, wants to improve the standard of
refereeing at the next World Cup, it should encourage referees to keep their
eyes on the action from a distance, rather than rushing to keep up with the
ball, Verheijen argues.

He also says that FIFA’s insistence that referees should retire at age 45 may
be misguided. If keeping up with the action is not so important, the officials’
physical condition is less crucial. “The accent could shift to other qualities,
like insight into the game and anticipation,” Verheijen says.