Intestinal symptoms and Blastocystis load in schoolchildren of Paranaguá Bay, Paraná, Brazil

ABSTRACT The symptomatology of Blastocystis cannot be attributed to any particular subtype, although can be related to a high Blastocystis infection load. One stool sample from each of 217 schoolchildren of Vale de Sol Paranaguá Bay (Paraná, Brazil) was collected. Three milliliters of each fixed sto...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo
Main Authors: Raimundo Seguí, Debora Klisiowicz, Camila Yumi Oishi, Rafael Toledo, José Guillermo Esteban, Carla Muñoz-Antoli
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Universidade de São Paulo (USP) 2017
Subjects:
Blastocystis spp
Intestinal symptoms
Load
Schoolchildren intestinal parasitism
Parasite load
Parasite burden
Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine
RC955-962
Infectious and parasitic diseases
RC109-216
Arctic
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1590/s1678-9946201759086
https://doaj.org/article/f74b639e1367452689f75ed03068d6fd
Description
Summary:ABSTRACT The symptomatology of Blastocystis cannot be attributed to any particular subtype, although can be related to a high Blastocystis infection load. One stool sample from each of 217 schoolchildren of Vale de Sol Paranaguá Bay (Paraná, Brazil) was collected. Three milliliters of each fixed stool sample were processed applying the formalin-ether concentration technique. After obtaining the overall prevalence of intestinal parasites, quantification was carried out in Blastocystis positive samples. A total of 75/217 (34.6%) children suffered from intestinal symptoms (abdominal pain and/or persistent diarrhea), of whom 41.3% (31/75) presented moderate/heavy Blastocystis load with a statistically significant risk to present intestinal symptoms (OR 0.039 [0.006-0.15]; p<0.001) Moreover, those symptomatic schoolchildren monoparasitized only by Blastocystis (10/75, 13.3%), and those polyparasitized by Blastocystis with other non-pathogenic species (15/75, 20%) with moderate/heavy loads, also entail a statistically significant risk of intestinal symptomatology, both in monoparasitism (12%, OR 0.10 [0.004-0.63]; p=0.021) and in polyparasitism with a non-pathogenic parasite (18.6%, OR 0.059 [0.002-0.35]; p=0.001). For the first time in Brazil, using data from schoolchildren of Paranaguá Bay, we demonstrated that moderate/ heavy loads of Blastocystis could be related to intestinal symptoms.

Similar Items