One dose of albendazole - two 200mg pills - can clear the worms out.īut as we've learned in other countries, treatment is only a temporary fix. With severe enough blood loss, people can die. Later, individuals may experience stomach pain, diarrhea, loss of appetite and excessive fatigue. Hallmark signs of infection are itching and rash where the worm first burrows into the skin. That's why people in other countries often become anemic and protein deficient, and in children, growth may be hampered. One thousand worms can gorge on 60 teaspoons - more than a whole cup of blood. But if you had 100 worms inside of you, that becomes six teaspoons of blood a day. According to Mejia, one worm sips just a half a drop of blood a day. More exposure means a higher likelihood of complications. But in other countries and regions with no plumbing, Diemert says those who walk outside barefoot can be exposed to worms on a daily basis. "The only way to increase the number of worms in your gut is to be exposed to more larvae outside."ĭiemert hypothesizes that residents of the Alabama community are only periodically exposed to worms. "Hookworm does not replicate inside of you they don't mate inside of you and have baby worms," Diemert explains. So people may be exposed to hookworm more often.
The reason is likely that there are more hookworms infesting the soil in poorer countries, perhaps because of high rates of open defecation. "In poorer Argentina, I have seen people with 1,000, 5,000 or even 20,000 eggs per gram of stool," Mejia says, That differs from what researchers see in other countries where hookworm is a problem. Stool samples revealed that community members had one or two hookworm eggs per gram of stool. Mejia's team tested for multiple parasites prevalent in the tropics, including hookworm. communities with poor sanitation were at risk for "neglected tropical diseases, which we ordinarily think of as confined to developing countries." Mejia's colleagues had previously reported that poor U.S. Flooding often carries sewage to their doorways, Mejia says, and drainage pipes can become overwhelmed with rain, flushing waste back into the home.Ĭoncerned about the sanitation situation and its potential health implications, the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise - a nonprofit organization that helps address poverty in the state - approached Mejia's team. Nearly three quarters of study participants reported that at one point or another, raw sewage had made its way back into their house. What's worse, even homes can become contaminated. The larva, which penetrate the skin, are even smaller. The soil in the area, Mejia adds, also drains poorly, worsening the situation.Īdult hookworms, from a dog. "But Alabama is very hilly and any drizzle of rain causes flooding, so whatever they delivered to the site spreads to the entire area, including their neighbors' area." Rojelio Mejia, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at the Baylor College of Medicine who led the hookworm study. The pipe runs from the toilets in their homes and stretches off some 30 feet above ground until it reaches a small ditch. Unable to afford a septic system, residents concoct their own sewer line using PVC piping, the researchers observed. so poor that many residents lack proper sewage systems. Lowndes County, Alabama, is one of the poorest counties in the U.S. for the past couples of decades we thought there was no more local transmission in the U.S." "There has not been any documentation of people being infected in the U.S. David Diemert, a hookworm expert at George Washington University. The study, published this month, found that 19 of 55 individuals tested positive for the worm. Now, a new study has uncovered a community of people infected with hookworm in Alabama.
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