Pete Dixon

This week I've been reading up on self supply of hookworms, not just to save money but to ensure access. Covid made getting larvae difficult, and here in Canada it's hit or miss once the cold weather sets in. Larvae don't like temps below 5C and they can die in transit because of the cold. Providers usually resend for free but that still means being symptomatic for the duration. I once spent an entire winter gluten-free because of a DOA shipment.

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I've been shopping supplies on Amazon - a binocular microscope, slides, pipettes, vials. It's largely a one-off purchase but it ain't cheap. I'm probably looking at $300+ CAN for the entire kit.

There is plenty of info on the techniques on breeding Necator americanus from stool, but it's always seemed complicated to me.

Now the Helminthic Therapy Support Group has launched its Discord Server and one of the chat categories is incubation. I had a discussion with someone who provides larvae for others and so has a fair amount of experience. She said incubation can be as simple as smearing 1 cc of poop on a coffee filter and sticking it in a closed large yogurt container with about a quarter inch of filtered (non-chlorinated) water. Leave it for a week and the water will have larvae. From there it's a matter of pipette work to select out the desired number. The filter and the yogurt container are frozen to kill any remaining larvae before disposal. Having bleach around wouldn't be a bad idea as well.

That doesn't sound hard at all. I'm sure the microscope work will need practicing, and I'd very much prefer to be wearing latex gloves while handling larvae.

The new HT Discord Server can be found at https://discord.gg/GWJhjU9xN . You'll want to sign up for Discord first before trying the link.