Human endoparasitic nematodes comprise more than fifty species, and their elongated and cylindrical bodies can vary in size from 1 millimeter to more than 1 meter in length.
Among the main parasitic diseases, the following stand out:
Ascariasis (lumbricoid ascaris) → worm that lives and reproduces in the human digestive tract (small intestine). Measures, as an adult, approximately fifty centimeters, whose mode of transmission occurs through ingestion of infective eggs of this helminth, contained in soil, water or food contaminated with feces human beings.
Usually without symptoms, however it can cause abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea (vomiting) and anorexia (eating disorder), also causing intestinal obstruction as the large amount of worms; bronchitis and pneumonia when larvae migrate to the lung.
Prophylactic measures include: personal hygiene, washing food well and filtering or boiling water before consumption and basic sanitation.
Hookworm and Necatoriasis (Ancylostoma duodenali and Necator Americanus
- yellowing) → worms with about 20 millimeters and hook-shaped tip, reproducing through expelled eggs together with the faeces. These hatch in warm, moist soil releasing larvae capable of penetrating the skin of a human host.Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
Inside the body, it invades the lymphatic system and then the circulatory system, migrating to the heart and also to the airways (the lung). They remain in the pulmonary alveoli, progressing to the bronchi and reaching the pharynx, being then swallowed, passing through the esophagus, stomach, reaching the intestine where they deposit more than 10,000 eggs per day.
Manifesting the following symptoms: anemia due to blood loss (the individual becomes yellowish in appearance), weakness, skin irritation at the site of penetration of the larva.
Prophylactic measures: treatment of patients, avoid contact with contaminated soil (use of shoes) and basic sanitation.
Among the other parasitic diseases that are also important are: Ancylostoma braziliensis (geographic or larva-migrans), Wucherelia Bancrofti (filaria) and Vermicular Oxyurus or Enterobius vermicularis (oxyurosis or enterobiosis).
By Krukemberghe Fonseca
Graduated in Biology
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
COSTA, Keilla Renata. "Human parasitic nematodes"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biologia/nematodeos-parasitas-ser-humano.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
