A new study reveals that women who are infected with a certain species of parasitic worm are more likely to become pregnant, Time reports.
The study was, published in Science on Friday.
The studies conducted on the 986 indigenous Tsimane women in Bolivia for nine years revealed that women infected with scaris lumbricoides had about two more children than women without the worm.
Researchers said that the findings of this study could lead to "novel fertility enhancing drugs".
Tsimane women in Bolivia have an average of nine children in the family. About 70% of the women in the population has a parasitic worm infection.
The researchers also noted that the women infected with the roundworm species have shortened intervals between births and have earlier first pregnancies.
"We think the effects we see are probably due to these infections altering women's immune systems, such that they become more or less friendly towards a pregnancy," University of California Santa Barbara professor Aaron Blackwell, one of the study's authors, told the BBC.
The researchers said that the roundworm infection led to a suppressed immune system in women due to the infection that made the body less likely to reject a fetus.
Blackwell said that the use of worms as a fertility treatment was an "intriguing possibility". However, he warned that there was far more work to be done "before we would recommend anyone try this".
