Prevalence of intestinal parasites among children referred to Children’s Medical Center during 18 years (1991–2008), Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Epidemiological studies show that parasitic inections are among the most common infections and one of the biggest health problems of the society worldwide. Children at school age have the highest morbidity compared with other ages. Therefore, by treating these children, the disease burden in the total population is reduced. In this study, prevalence of parasitic infection in children referred to Children's Medical Center was compared in different years. In this retrospective cross-sectional study, the subjects were children under 13 years who were referred to Children's Medical Center Laboratory during 18 years (1991-2008) and underwent stool exam by any reason. The specimens were evaluated by different common methods of stool parasitology. In suspected cases, parasites was cultured in specific medium and stained as needed. Required data were obtained from the laboratory files and analysed according to study's purpose. Subjects were 124 366 children. Among them, 0.78% of cases had parasitic infections and 60.54% cases were male. Parasitic infections were related to protozoa in 95.33% cases and intestinal worms in 4.87%. Of them, 50.352% were pathogenic protozoa. The most parasitic infection was Giardia lamblia. Among intestinal worms, the highest prevalence was related to Hymenolepis nana (40.7%). A comparison between the first 10 years and the next 8 years of the study showed that the prevalence of intestinal parasites were 8% and 1% (P < 0.001) and the rate for protozoal infection were 14.9% and 4.3%, respectively (P < 0.001). The prevalence of intestinal parasites was reduced during recent years; however, more attempts should be performed to make it lower.

Prevalence and risk factors of intestinal protozoan infections: a population-based study in rural areas of Boyer-Ahmad district, Southwestern Iran

“…This finding is consistent with other studies performed in different geographical areas of Iran [2, 9, 16, 17]. In Iran, results of previous studies indicated that Giardia and Blastocystis are the most common intestinal protozoan infection among the population [2, 8–10, 16, 17]. The most prevalent intestinal parasite in the current study was Giardia and Blastocystis which were rated at 17.4 and 17.7% respectively.…”

“…Previous studies in Iran revealed high prevalence rate of parasitic infection in different part of the country [8–10]. A large scale survey by Sayyari et al, on 53,955 stool samples from different provinces of the country showed that 19.3% of the study populations are infected with at least one of intestinal parasitic infection [2].…”

A Survey on Prevalence of Intestinal Parasites Infections in Patients Referred to the Public Hospital in Khoy, West Azarbaijan Province, Iran, 2014 - 2016

“…These results indicate that the helminthic infection has declined compared to previous studies in Iran (6,12,(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31).…”

The Parasitic Contamination of Raw Vegetables Consumed in Zahedan, Iran

“…The consumption of raw vegetables plays a major epidemiological role in the transmission of parasitic food-borne diseases. Intestinal parasites are widely prevalent in developing countries, probably due to poor sanitation and inadequate personal hygiene (16).…”