Having parasites can boost fertility
Women infected with giant roundworms have more babies
By Meghan Rosen
Parasitic worms may cause baby booms.
Amazonian women infected with giant roundworms could bear up to two more children during their lifetime compared with uninfected women, an analysis of nearly a decade of medical data suggests. Hookworms, on the other hand, might act as birth control. Women with these parasites could have three fewer children than uninfected women, researchers report in the Nov. 20 Science.
No one knows how exactly worms tweak fertility. The parasites could tinker with immune cell numbers, making conditions ripe (or wrong) for pregnancy, speculate behavioral ecologist Aaron Blackwell of the University of California, Santa Barbara and colleagues.