helminths Flashcards
What is a key difference in the lifecycle of nematodes and platyhelminthes?
Nematodes get bigger through their lifecycle but cestodes and trematodes look different at all stages in life cycle.
What does dioecious mean? Which helminths are?
Separate sexes
all nematodes and schistosoma species
What are DALYs?
Disability Adjusted Life Years
It is a measure of overall disease burden, expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death.
Which STH has the biggest health burden?
Ascaris lumbricoides
What is MDA?
Mass drug administration (MDA) is the administration of a treatment to every member of a defined population or every person living in a defined geographical area (except those for whom the medicine in contraindicated) at approximately the same time and often at repeated intervals.
Life cycle of Ascaris lumbricoides
- Adults reside in small intestine, eggs in faeces
- eggs mature in external environment
- embryonated eggs ingested from soil/ contaminated food
- L3 larvum hatch and penetrate gut wall, migrate to lungs via bloodstream
- migrate up trachea and swallowed back into the gut where they mature
treatment of nematodes
albendazole/mebendazole
Life cycle of Trichuris trichuria
- Unembryonated eggs passed in faeces
- Eggs mature in external environment
- Embryonated eggs are ingested
- Larvae hatch in small intestine
- Adult worms embed into well of caecum and large bowel
Diagnosis of trichuris
stool microscopy or colonoscopy
Life cycle of Hookworm species
- Eggs in faeces
- develop in external environment into filariform larvae
- penetrate skin ‘ground itch’
- bloodstream transport into lungs
- migrate up trachea and swallowed by gut
- adult worms develop in SI
Life cycle of Enterobius vermicularis ‘pinworm’
- Eggs on perianal skin
- Maturation on skin surface
- Scratching - picks up eggs on hands/ bed linen
- Ingestion of embryonated eggs by same host ‘auto-infection’ or another host
- larvae hatch in SI
- Adult worm in caecum
- Adult females migrate out through anus to lay eggs on skin
Diagnosis of Enterobius
Scotch tape method, peri-anal swab, lookunder microscope
What are the different life cycles of Strongyloides stercoralis
Free living worm in environment, direct parasitic life cycle in host, autoinfection cycle
Diagnosis of strongyloides
larvae in faeces or sputum, concentrate stool, charocoal cultures, antibody detection, pcr
Which infection is more intense- Ascaris or Trichuria?
Ascaris - higher egg count in faeces (200,000 per day) compared to Trichuria (20,000)
In Ascaris larvae enter bloodstream and migrate to lungs
in trichuris larvae hatch in SI and embed into caecum.
Name the cestode species
Taenia saginata–‘beef tapeworm’ Taenia solium–‘porktapeworm’ Diphyllobothrium latum–‘fish tapeworm’ Hymenolepis nana –‘dwarf tapeworm’ Echinococcus spp.
What is the general morphology of cestodes?
tapeworm with scolex (head) with hooks or suckers for attachment and proglottids (segments). they’re hermaphrodite
Generalised cestode life cycle
- Adults in small intestine
- Proglottids break off which hold eggs
- Eggs shed in faeces
- Ingestion by intermediate host
- Develop into metacestode (juvenile)
- Definitive host ingests metacestode