Entire classes of allergies are basically caused by IgE, our worm-targeting depth charges, getting bored by the lack of worms in our bodies for possibly the first time in millennia.
If we could tweak our bodies we wouldn’t want to eliminate IgE. But we’d want to have it produced only when a recognizer complex finds thar be worms.
> Why would the body, a master of efficiency, produce IgE just for fun?
I was being punchy. “The pathway of B cell differentiation with respect to the nature and location of potential IgE+ memory cells as well as long-lived IgE producing plasma cells in allergy is still not completely understood” [1]. We do know, however, that “IgE is continuously produced to maintain constant IgE levels in blood,” and that Th2 cells can increase that baseline.
they are saying that the body produced to to fight parasites like worms. these were a big problem for most of evolutionary history. With modern living standards, our immune systems don't encounter many parasites so they get "bored" and over react to harmless things like food. Evolution hasn't had time to adjust to the new living standards since its only been a few generations.
Was this reviewed by anyone outside of their employer? The logo dead center at the top at least gives away that it’s not an academic paper, and without independent review this seems like a fancy press release in LaTeX academic clothing.
Hmm, the wording for me says “technical report”, but I assume I overlooked it somewhere; either way, that’s the context the posted link was missing, thank you!
Entire classes of allergies are basically caused by IgE, our worm-targeting depth charges, getting bored by the lack of worms in our bodies for possibly the first time in millennia.
If we could tweak our bodies we wouldn’t want to eliminate IgE. But we’d want to have it produced only when a recognizer complex finds thar be worms.
How can IgE get bored? That doesn’t sound right. Why would the body, a master of efficiency, produce IgE just for fun?
> Why would the body, a master of efficiency, produce IgE just for fun?
I was being punchy. “The pathway of B cell differentiation with respect to the nature and location of potential IgE+ memory cells as well as long-lived IgE producing plasma cells in allergy is still not completely understood” [1]. We do know, however, that “IgE is continuously produced to maintain constant IgE levels in blood,” and that Th2 cells can increase that baseline.
[1] https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4409/8/9/994
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK27117/
they are saying that the body produced to to fight parasites like worms. these were a big problem for most of evolutionary history. With modern living standards, our immune systems don't encounter many parasites so they get "bored" and over react to harmless things like food. Evolution hasn't had time to adjust to the new living standards since its only been a few generations.
So... Let's bring back the worms I guess?
Hygiene hypothesis
Was this reviewed by anyone outside of their employer? The logo dead center at the top at least gives away that it’s not an academic paper, and without independent review this seems like a fancy press release in LaTeX academic clothing.
Their website calls it a "pre-print", and Anthropic links to it in their recent blog post: https://www.anthropic.com/research/early-progress-drug-devel...
Hmm, the wording for me says “technical report”, but I assume I overlooked it somewhere; either way, that’s the context the posted link was missing, thank you!
Related:
Early progress on accelerating drug development with Claude
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50265609