Antiinflammatory eggs

Proteins secreted by parasite eggs might hold the key to the next antiinflammatory therapy. On page 1319, Smith and colleagues describe the first chemokine binding protein (CKBP) produced by a human pathogen and show that it can suppress acute inflammation in disease models.

The blood-dwelling worm Schistosoma mansoni takes advantage of the host's immune system in two ways. It subverts specific inflammatory cells to help move its eggs from the intestinal vasculature to the feces, where they can be shed. It also suppresses the immune response in order to establish chronic infections, in part as shown here by keeping other inflammatory cells away from the eggs.

This selective cell recruitment was not due solely to cytokine modulation, a known schistosome ability. As viruses produce chemokine binding proteins to neutralize host chemokines,...