It is quite difficult to detect ascarids( large white round worms up to 40 cm long) in the feces of an adult human or child. And all because adult individuals, in contrast to pinworms, parasitize and lay their eggs in the lumen of the small intestine( pinworms for mating progeny crawl out through the rectum and lay eggs around the anus).Together with feces with ascariasis only eggs come out( pictured).Tell us about how they look easy. The eggs of the ascarids are oval in shape, on the outside they are covered with a brown membrane of the protein structure, from the mechanical damage it is protected by three more glossy layers. The length of the oval egg is 0.07 mm. Inside is the embryo, for its maturation and development certain conditions are necessary.
Adult ascarids( pictured) in feces in children and in adult patients can be detected in extremely rare cases. To understand why, the study of the life cycle of helminths helps. Invasive eggs enter the body from the outside, along with dirty food or dirty hands. During the first five days after infection, all larvae migrate through all internal systems. In the early days, they eat their bioresources, then they are the particles of human blood. The migration phase lasts about three months. During this time, the larvae settle, those that enter the small intestine grow to sexual maturity. The females mate with the males, after the sexual act the males die and together with the feces the dead go out. But even in this case it is rather difficult to discern the ascarids without a microscope. And all because worms, getting into the large intestine, are digested or dismembered. In the feces can only be their fragments. As they look, the uninitiated person does not know, therefore to distinguish digested worm from contents of an intestine can not.
When in feces can you see live and dead askarids?
To see live and dead ascaris in feces in children and adults is possible only during the treatment of ascaridosis with antihelminthic drugs. The photo shows how it looks. Modern means have a different effect on worms. Some cause paralysis of the worms, with a large congestion they completely come out together with the feces. Visually, they are like strings with a dense round body. The color of the body indicates the vitality of the worms. If it is whitish in color, then there is a live ascarid in the stool, if the strings are black( in the photo), then the parasite has already died.
Knowing how the human roundworm look, you can try to turn in time for help to specialists and prevent the formation of possible complications in children and adults. An example of one of them is clearly shown in the photo. To start to sound alarm is necessary and when in feces alive and dead askarids are not found out, but the child or the adult person complains of occurrence of characteristic signs. It can be general weakness, a decrease in habitual activity, a sharp change of mood, irritability, muscle pain.
To begin to worry it is worth it, if on a background of a malaise there are skin rashes, pains in the abdomen or in the right hypochondrium, nausea, dry cough and shortness of breath. A characteristic symptom of ascariasis is a wavy change of some of the symptoms by others. If several manifestations are found, immediately visit a parasitologist or infectious disease specialist and pass an analysis of feces for ascariasis. This procedure is quite simple.
How correctly to pass the analysis of a feces on an ascariasis?
No special training is needed. But some recommendations should be taken into account:
- Before collecting feces for ascariasis and children and adults, you need to go to the toilet and urinate.
- Then you need to take a clean dry container( pharmacies sell special plastic containers designed to collect feces, as they look like shown in the photo).If there are no such at hand, any empty bottle with a lid will fit.
- To determine ascariasis, it is necessary to place a volume of material equal to two teaspoons in the container.
- It is necessary to take samples from different sides of the faeces( from the side, from below, from the inside).
- After immersion in the container, the material is tightly closed with a lid.
- On the container it is important to paste a piece of paper with the inscription of the name, name and date of collection of the analysis.
In order to make an accurate analysis of the stool, it is impossible to store the material in the container for a long time( ideally, the time difference from the moment of collection and laboratory study was no more than 45 minutes).If necessary, the time can be delayed by five six hours, but for this purpose, it is best to put the feces in the refrigerator.