Overview of Strongyloidiasis: A Neglected Tropical Disease

Abstract

| Strongyloidiasis infection caused by Strongyloides stercoralis is still an elusive disease in spite of recent advances with experiments on animal models. As it is endemic in developing countries such as Asia, Africa, Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, Central and South America but still poses a threat to the developed world owing to its peculiar trait of autoinfection, hyper-infection syndrome involving pulmonary and gastrointestinal system and disseminated infection with involvement of other organs like liver, brain and lungs. It can occur asymptomatically which confuses the clinicians during diagnosis as it has no gold standard diagnostic techniques although luciferase immune-precipitation system shows increased sensitivity and specificity to detect S. stercoralis specific antibody titter in serum and PCR method to detect DNA in fecal samples. Ivermectin and albendazole are recommended anthelmintic for strongyloides infection. This review will be focused on current published research on improved diagnostic techniques for strongyloidiasis detection and immune mechanism thought to be responsible for hyper-infection along with epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical manifestations, diagnosis, treatment, prevention and control. S. stercoralis is still a global health concerned topic that is undermined in many countries. Novel diagnostic methods are expected to improve epidemiological studies, treatment, control and prevention of strongyloidiasis. Further studies are needed to open the mechanism of severe clinical manifestations of human strongyloidiasis.